cl  ri  n e 1 1, 


p!  ' 

un\na. 


YOUNG  CHINA 

by 

Lewis  S.  Gannett 

Associate  Editor  of  The  Nation 


SEAL  OF  THE  CANTON-HONGKONG  STRIKE  COMMITTEE 


Published  by 
The  Nation 

20  Vesey  Street,  New  York  City 
Price,  twenty-five  cents 


+ #34#aglll  4^ 

Poster  from  a Peking  Wall. 


The  chat'acters  on  the  mam’s  arm  spell  Workers;  those  on  the  bell, 
Alarm.  The  strokes  from  the  bell  are  (i)  Restore  the  Workers’ 
Federation  in  Shanghai;  (2)  We  want  freedom  of  speech  and 
assembly;  (3)  Abolition  of  unequal  treatises:  Autonomy  of  Cus- 
toms; H)  Support  the  Canton  Government. 


FOREWORD 


That  a 'permanent  solution  of  China’s  troubles  can  come  in  an'y 
immediate  future  is  unlikely.  The  causes  lie  too  deep.  Chi-na  has 
moved  too  far  into  the  twentieth  century  for  any  single  despot  to  he 
able  to  unite  her  a'ud  rule  her  with  an  iron  will.  The  well-meant 
efforts  of  various  foreigners  since  the  revolution  to  aid  one  strong 
man  to  dominate  the  country  have  only  aggravated  the  immense  dif- 
ficulties of  the  situation.  China  is  emerging  from  a patriarchal, 
stable,  medieval  civilization  into  the  restless,  changing  current  of 
the  new  industrial  world.  Industrialism  has  touched  her  only  here 
and  there,  hut  it  has  destroyed  the  old  equilibrium  and  upset  the  old 
balances,  and  the  present  civil  war  is  revolutionizing  China,  breaking 
up  the  ancient  stability  of  the  local  units,  destroying  that  devotion 
to  the  past  which  was  rooted  in  local  customs,  local  bonds,  and  local 
divinities,  teaching  the  Chinese  to  work  together  in  mousses — and 
creating  that  national  consciousness  which  China  has  hitherto  lacked. 

The  nationalism  which  has  found  its  military  and  political  expres- 
sion in  the  Canton  movement  will  take  years  to  work  out  its  destiny. 
Its  immediate  goods — to  defeat  the  Northern  militarists,  to  drive  out 
the  foreigner  from  his  position  of  privilege — are  simple  compared 
with  the  larger  movement.  What  kind  of  new  China  it  will  organize, 
what  effect  it  will  have  upon  the  colonial  organization  of  the  world, 
remains  to  be  seen.  For  the  present  it  needs  more  patience  than  the 
V/est  is  wont  to  give,  and  more  time — time  for  the  new  generation 
to  grow  into  responsibility,  time  for  China  to  adapt  herself  to  the 
twentieth  century.  To  expect  peace  and  law  and  order  from  a conti- 
nent which  is  trying  to  compress  a thousand  years  of  political  and 
economic  history  into  ten  is  absurd.  The  following  pages  are  an 
effort  at  sympathetic  understanding  of  that  enormous  process — 
products  of  a winter  in  China  as  correspondent  of  The  Nation — and 
are,  'with  the  exception  of  a few  paragraphs  from  an  article  in  Asia 
and  one  section  from  the  New  York  Times  Sunday  Magazine,  a 
development  of  articles  and  editorials  which  have  appeared  in 
The  Nation. 


iii 


0 


Contents 

Foreword iii 

I.  “Unchanging  China”  1 

II.  A Nation  of  Anarchists 6 

III.  Americanization? 9 

IV.  The  Missionaries  13 

V.  China:  The  World’s  Proletariat 18 

VI.  Canton — Nest  of  Nationalism 23 

VII.  The  Canton  General  28 

VIII.  Bolshevism? 32 

IX.  America  in  China 37 

X.  From  The  Nation’s  Editorial  Diary 41 


IV 


I 


“Unchanging  China” 

OCCIDENTALS  enter  China  at  Shanghai,  the  greatest  of  those 
hj’^brid  Eurasian  cities  kno^vn  as  “treaty  ports”  and,  in  some 
eerie  way,  the  most  unpleasant  city  in  the  world.  Here,  in  what  was 
once  a swamp  outside  the  city  walls,  white  men  have  built  the  greatest 
trading  city  of  the  East.  The  old  Chinese  town  is  only  a suburban 
slum  today;  what  men  call  Shanghai  is  the  foreign  city,  the  “Inter- 
national” (British)  and  French  Settlements  along  the  river  front. 
Here,  under  European  flags  and  protection,  the  business  of  China  is 
done. 

It  is  a mighty  city  that  the  white  men  have  built  upon  the  banks 
of  the  Whangpoo.  Broad  paved  streets;  massive  stone  buildings,  as 
gloomily  vast  and  permanent  as  any  in  London’s  City;  clanging  street 
cars,  electric  lights  in  imitation  of  Broadway;  gas,  running  water, 
sewers,  all  the  trappings  of  Western  civilization  that  are  so  uncom- 
fortably missing  in  most  of  China.  Automobiles  clog  the  streets ; the 
telephone  system  works  in  English;  the  pretty  river-front  park  is 
“reserved  for  the  foreign  community.”  (Shanghai  is  politer  today 
than  when  the  sign  read,  “Chinese  and  dogs  not  allowed.”)  For  miles 
factory  chimneys  cloud  the  sky;  here,  as  in  the  West,  men  work  in 
droves  of  thousands.  Here,  if  anywhere,  the  West  seems  to  have  made 
itself  at  home  in  the  East. 

Yet  ten  minutes,  even  in  times  of  calmest  peace,  in  this  smoothly 
functioning  city  give  one  a panicky  realization  that  it  is  neither 
Europe  nor  Asia,  but  something  precariously  balanced  between  them. 
Among  the  autos  dodge  swarms  of  ricksha  coolies,  clad  in  every  imagi- 
nable combination  of  blue  cotton  rags,  some  barefoot,  some  straw-soled, 
many  naked  to  the  waist — all  running,  sweating,  panting.  There  is 
almost  no  horse  traffic.  Men — and  sometimes  women — pull  the  carts. 
Watch  them — each  at  his  rope,  six  or  eight  to  a cart,  straining  up  the 
bridges  over  Soochow  Creek,  and  you  will  realize  the  human  meaning 
of  the  simple  phrase,  “Labor  is  cheap  in  China.”  Nor  is  it  white  men 
who  crowd  the  sidewalks.  Oriental  figures — a few  in  ugly  Western 
felt  hats,  coats  and  trousers,  more  in  skull-caps  and  stately  long  silk 
robes — make  up  these  sedate  throngs.  And  at  every  bank,  club,  hotel, 
office-building  a huge  black-bearded  turbaned  Sikh  stands  guard,  ready 
to  cuff  out  of  the  way  any  saucy  yellow  man. 

In  Shanghai,  as  everywhere  in  China,  one  is  impressed,  and  often 
oppressed,  by  the  sense  of  the  crowd.  Here  men  teem;  they  swarm; 
the  individual  seems  as  insignificant  as  a single  ant  in  an  ant-hill. 
No  one  knows  how  many  human  beings  live  in  Shanghai,  for  the  native 
cities  that  cluster  about  the  foreign  settlements  have  never  been  ade- 
quately counted;  but  in  the  foreign  cities  alone  there  are  a million 


1 


and  a half  Chinese  and  only  40,000  foreigners,  of  whom  more  than 
half  are  of  races  ineligible  to  citizenship  in  the  United  States,  The 
Chinese  form  97  per  cent  of  the  population  of  the  cities  which  white 
men  govern ; they  pay  80  per  cent  of  the  taxes ; but  they  have  no  share 
in  the  city  administration,  their  children  cannot  play  in  the  city  park, 
and  if  they  want  to  send  their  sons  to  school  they  must  pay  for  it 
themselves.  Most  of  the  foreign  clubs  (the  American  Club  is  no  excep- 
tion) do  not  admit  Chinese  even  as  luncheon  guests;  the  line  between 
white  and  yellow  is  drawn  as  sharply  as  that  between  black  and  white 
in  Georgia ; and  one  ends  by  understanding  the  bitter  fear  psychology 
of  the  tiny  oligarchy  which  has  built  this  city,  is  proud  of  it,  and  wants 
to  retain  it  as  a white  citadel  in  a country  of  400  million  yellow  men. 
One  ends,  too,  by  hating  Shanghai ; no  one,  foreigner  or  Chinese,  can 
feel  at  ease  there, 

***** 

Life  is  warm  and  intimate  in  the  narrow  old  streets  of  Hang- 
chow, In  one  shop  open  broadly  to  the  lane  a whole  family,  from  sgven 
to  seventy  years  old,  sociably  weaves  baskets;  another  family  saws 
wood  with  ancient  Chinese  saws,  and  makes  the  product  into  furni- 
ture; in  a third  shop  bronze  bells  are  being  cast;  and  across  the  street 
one  family  is  making  brooms,  another  idols,  a third  coffins.  They  live 
so  close  that  their  lives  are  interwoven,  as  is  their  conversation.  No 
stranger  passes  but  they  all  note  him;  no  accident  but  all  share  in  the 
distress  and  laughter.  The  hours  are  long — indeed,  there  is  no  respite 
except  for  food  and  sleep — but  there  is  little  strain;  work  and  play 
are  intermingled. 

One  suddenly  becomes  aware  that  this  is  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
carved  wood  railings  of  the  second  stories;  the  richness  of  color  and 
sound  and  smell  (most  of  the  cooking  is  done  on  the  street,  and  the 
little  restaurants  send  out  a rich  cargo  of  Oriental  odors) ; the  beauti- 
ful shop  signs — vertical  strips  of  painted  wood  inscribed  with  gilded 
Chinese  characters — this  must  be  very  like  the  medieval  back  streets  of 
those  European  cities  which  still  preserve  their  proudest  squares  to 
remind  us  of  what  guild  life  was  before  the  days  of  factories  and 
efficiency. 

Through  the  narrow  streets  dodges  an  endless  line  of  ricksha 
boys,  while  the  occupants  strike  little  foot-bells  to  emphasize  the  musi- 
cal shouts  with  which  the  boys  warn  of  their  coming.  It  seems  very 
ancient,  very  Oriental.  And  then  one  learns  that  the  first  ricksha 
came  to  Hangchow  fifteen  years  ago,  imported  from  Japan  for  an 
American  missionary,  and  that  the  ricksha  itself  is  a missionary  in- 
vention only  fifty-odd  years  old.  It  dawns  upon  one  that  China  can 
change,  has  changed,  is  changing.  There  must  be  thousands  of  darting 
ricksha  boys  in  Hangchow  today;  fifteen  years  ago  the  mandarins 
rode  in  sedan  chairs  and  the  merchants  walked.  One  is  no  longer  sur- 


2 


prised  to  turn  the  corner  from  these  handworkers’  shops  and  find,  be- 
hind high  white  walls,  a great  modern  silk  factory,  where  thousands 
of  trousered  Chinese  girls  work  thirteen  hours,  and  earn,  if  they  are 
very  skilful,  almost  twenty-five  cents  a day. 

***** 

Long  before  Shanghai  Canton,  far  to  the  south,  was  opened  to 
foreign  trade.  It  has  been  the  center  of  half  a dozen  wars  and  near- 
wars with  the  “foreign  devils,”  but  by  some  miracle,  which  may  have 
its  root  in  the  vigor  of  the  Cantonese  character,  it  has  maintained  its 
Chinese  soul  and  its  Chinese  rule.  It  is  proudly  tearing  down  the  nar- 
row lanes  and  opening  wide  avenues;  it  razes  temples  and  creates 
schools;  it  has  its  own  traffic  police  and  a municipal  sprinkling-cart; 
it  even  has  a ten-story  department  store,  hotel,  and  moving-picture 
palace  on  the  Bund  (built  by  a Chinese  peanut  vendor  bom  in  Aus- 
tralia) ; but  it  has  not  succumbed  to  the  West.  Stand,  if  you  doubt  it, 
at  the  South  Gate  of  a morning  and  watch  the  long  lines  of  coolies  pass 
out,  bearing,  trembling  from  the  tips  of  bamboo  poles,  great  slopping 
vessels  which  contain  the  night’s  human  refuse  without  which  the 
Canton  delta,  the  most  densely  populated  region  in  the  world,  could 
never  maintain  its  ancient  and  intensive  agriculture.  Or  watch  the 
life  of  the  river. 

Ocean  steamers  come  up  to  Canton,  but  anchor  in  mid-stream. 
The  sampans,  bobbing  on  the  water  with  their  long  and  short  oars, 
do  the  rest.  Tens  of  thousands,  perhaps  hundreds  of  thousands,  of 
sampans  line  the  shores  and  dot  the  river  for  miles.  People  are  born 
on  them,  live  their  lives  on  them,  die  on  them.  Women  with  tiny 
babies  on  their  backs  pull  at  the  oars;  solemn-faced  children  a year 
old  sit  like  silent  dolls  watching  their  mothers  row.  Two-  and  three- 
year-olds  scamper  recklessly  from  boat  to  boat;  at  four  or  five  they 
help  their  mothers  with  the  oars.  Some  sampans  carry  passengers, 
others  cabbages,  pigs,  silk,  kindling-wood,  offal,  whatever  comes  to 
hand.  They  go  where  destiny  sends  them,  and  tie  up  where  night 
finds  them — fifteen-  or  twenty-deep  against  the  river  bank.  River- 
folk  do  not  need  to  go  ashore  for  food;  itinerant  vendors  ply  their 
wares  in  and  out  of  the  narrow  fairways,  between  the  masses  of  sam- 
pans, selling  cotton  cloth,  charcoal,  bean-cake,  rice  over  the  gunwales 
— the  woman  working  the  oars  while  the  man  tinkles  a bell  and  sings 
his  wares.  They  drink  the  filthy  river  water  and  deposit  their  refuse 
there — Arabs  of  the  wateinvay,  they  know  no  other  home. 

For  centuries  they  and  their  ancestors  have  lived  thus — have 
watched  the  first  Western  ships  sail  in,  seen  iron  replace  wood  and 
steel  iron,  watched  the  coming  of  steam  and  of  oil  fuel — and  their 
lives  go  on  unchanged.  So  it  seems.  But  already  a score  of  motor 
launches  snort  up  and  down  the  river,  doing  the  work  of  several  hun- 
dred sampans;  at  Whampoa,  nine  miles  downstream,  where  the  cadets 


3 


were  trained  who  led  the  Northern  advance  of  Canton’s  Nationalist 
army,  modern  docks  are  being  built.  Men  on  strike  against  British 
Hongkong  dug  a road  to  link  Canton  and  Whampoa;  and  if  ships 
come  alongside  and  discharge  directly  what  will  become  of  the  sam- 
pans? The  city  has  an  electric-lighting  plant,  and  there  are  plans  for 
supplying  power  looms  to  the  home  workers  who  spin  silk  on  Honam 
Island,  between  Canton  and  Whampoa.  Already  modern-minded  Chi- 
nese have  destroyed  the  independence  of  Honam’s  silk  industry  and 
developed  an  efficient  modern  sweatshop  system  of  exploiting  home 
workers. 

***** 

Men  and  camels  seem  like  midgets  filing  along  beneath  the  colos- 
sal walls  of  Peking — walls  so  vast  and  powerful  that  the  gates  can 
still  be  shut  to  bar  out  an  invading  army.  The  red  and  gold  door- 
ways of  the  dusty  gray  lanes  of  the  Tartar  City;  the  bold  red  walls 
and  the  smoldering  fire  of  the  glazed  tile  roofs  of  the  Forbidden 
City  within;  the  yellows,  the  blues,  the  greens,  the  gleaming  con- 
trasts in  the  painted  beams;  the  vast,  perfect  proportions  of  a me- 
tropolis laid  out  as  a unit — Peking  has  something  of  the  grandeur 
of  Rome,  the  glory  of  Greece,  the  charm  of  Paris,  and  is  the  Eternal 
City  of  China. 

So-called.  But  in  reality  Peking  is  no  more  eternal  than  Car- 
thage or  Ur.  It  is  already  half  dead.  It  was  only  half  a century 
ago  that  the  “Old  Buddha”  built  the  marvelous  gardens  known  as  the 
Summer  Palace  (to  replace  still  more  marvelous  gardens  sacked  by 
the  Vandal  British  and  French,  in  the  Second  Opium  War),  with  the 
infinite  richness  of  old  China — the  long  painted  wood  gallery,  the 
white  marble  camel-back  bridge,  the  strange  piles  of  lovely  buildings 
that  climb  the  mountainside.  Yet  the  Summer  Palace  is  already  arch- 
aeology. It  is  a museum,  a relic  of  a past  that  can  never  be  again. 
If  you  look  for  unchanging  China,  do  not  seek  it  in  the  magnificence 
of  an  empire  that  is  gone  forever — go  to  the  Chinese  village. 

***** 

In  North  China  the  drab  villages,  built  of  brown  mud  bricks, 
roofed  with  brown  mud,  sink  colorlessly  into  the  brown  mud  plain. 
You  do  not  realize  at  once  how  many  of  them  there  are.  Only  a mile 
or  two  separates  one  cluster  of  houses  from  the  next.  But  these 
villages  have  no  shops;  they  buy  and  sell  at  the  market-town,  and  it 
may  be  twenty  miles  from  one  market-town  to  the  next. 

The  market-town  of  Yenchiu  is  only  seven  miles  from  Tung- 
chow  and  the  railroad,  but  the  seven  miles  make  a breach  of  cen- 
turies. You  cross  the  Grand  Canal  on  an  ancient  ferry  propelled  by 
three  wild-looking  ruffians  with  poles,  and  join  the  parade  of  over- 
laden donkeys,  rickety  horse-carts,  and  warmly  padded  Chinese.  The 
road  is  just  a rut  across  fields  of  winter  wheat,  sometimes  across 


4 


nothing  but  blown  sand.  It  seems  to  stray  and  wander  aimlessly, 
finding  its  true  course  only  in  the  villages,  where  the  commerce  of 
centuries  has  worn  the  roads  deep  beneath  the  level  of  the  farmyards. 
For  these  villages,  rebuilt  every  few  years  out  of  the  eternal  brown 
mud,  have  histories  that  antedate  Charlemagne. 

Yenchiu  is  just  one  market-town  among  tens  of  thousands  scat- 
tered over  the  continent  that  is  China.  It  is  big  enough  to  hold  two 
inns,  where  a Chinese  traveler  may  lodge  for  about  one  cent  a night; 
half  a dozen  herb  drug-stores;  a wine-shop;  two  blacksmiths,  a draper, 
four  rice  merchants,  a silversmith,  a pewter-shop,  a saddler,  a salt- 
dealer,  the  inevitable  vast  pawnshop,  and  a “foreign-goods  shop.” 
Probably  it  has  had  most  of  these  since  the  remote  day  in  the  Sung 
dynasty,  a thousand  years  or  so  ago,  when  the  town’s  first  mud  wall 
was  built.  The  “foreign-goods  store”  has  only  two  foreign  com- 
modities— cotton  thread,  from  Japan;  wire  nails,  from  America.  “We 
used  to  make  our  own  thread,”  they  will  tell  you;  “but  the  foreign 
thread  was  so  much  cheaper  that  we  stopped ; now  the  price  has  risen, 
but  we  have  forgotten  how  to  make  our  own.”  Tobacco  and  oil, 
universal  in  China,  of  course  come  from  abroad.  The  cotton  goods 
are  of  local  weave.  In  the  old  days,  the  blacksmith  remembers,  the 
coal  came  down  from  the  Western  Hills  by  camel;  now  he  uses  Man- 
churian coal  mined  by  the  Japanese.  The  iron  used  to  come  from 
Huai-lui  on  the  border  of  Shansi;  now  it,  too,  is  Japanese.  Apart 
from  that  Yenchiu  lives  as  it  has  lived  for  centuries — each  of  the 
mud-walled  villages  about  it  grows  its  own  crops,  makes  its  own 
products,  and  takes  its  goods  to  the  market-town  of  Yenchiu,  there 
to  exchange  them  for  the  products  of  another  village.  Civil  war  a 
hundred  miles  away  hardly  touches  them. 

Coal  and  iron  and  cigarettes  and  kerosene  have  done  little  to 
disturb  the  minds  of  these  villages.  Shingtu,  five  miles  away,  boasts 
two  village  scholars,  one  so  advanced  that  he  has  a daughter  study- 
ing medicine  in  far-away  America.  He  is  the  only  man  in  his  village 
who  has  ever  sent  a child  away  to  study;  his  is  the  only  family  that 
does  not  bind  its  daughters’  feet;  yet  old  Yang,  scholar  and  head- 
man of  a village  twenty-five  miles  from  Peking,  did  not  know  what 
were  the  “unequal  treaties”  that  had  fired  the  youth  of  the  treaty  ports, 
caused  riots,  and  put  China  on  the  front  pages  of  newspapers  in  cities 
ten  thousand  miles  away. 


6 


II 


A Nation  of  Anarchists 

CHINA  is  an  anarchist’s  heaven.  There  is  hardly  a government 
worthy  of  the  name;  i>eople  seem  to  be  happiest  where  there  is 
least  government;  and  the  worst  evils  of  Chinese  life  obviously  spring 
from  the  attempts  of  misguided  people  to  govern  her.  Where  would-be 
rulers  are  missing,  China  does  well  enough.  Go  out  into  the  country 
districts,  and  you  will  find  the  Chinese  living  much  as  they  have  lived 
for  thirty  or  forty  centuries,  blissfully  unconscious  of  the  necessity 
for  the  elaborate  paraphernalia  of  Western  law  and  order. 

“It  was  the  appearance  of  sages,”  one  of  China’s  wise  old  men 
wrote  twenty-odd  centuries  ago,  “which  caused  the  appearance  of 
robbers.  . . . The  people  were  innocent  until  sages  came  to  worry 
them  with  ceremonies  and  music  in  order  to  rectify  them,  and  dangled 
charity  and  duty  to  one’s  neighbor  before  them  in  order  to  satisfy 
their  hearts — then  the  people  began  to  stump  and  limp  about  in  their 
love  of  knowledge  and  to  struggle  with  each  other  in  their  desire  for 
gain.” 

We  of  the  West  can  never,  I think,  understand  China,  until  we 
recover  somewhat  from  our  respect  for  political  institutions  and  grasp 
the  idea  that  government  is  not  an  end  but  a means.  We  are  accus- 
tomed to  thinking  in  terms  of  law;  the  Chinese  are  not.  They  have 
a magnificent  contempt  for  political  government,  and  a fundamental 
instinct  for  getting  along  with  one  another  on  a basis  of  custom  and 
reasonableness  which  confounds  the  foreigner  appalled  by  their  po- 
litical chaos.  It  may  be  inevitable  that  we  shall  force  respect  for 
government  and  written  laws  upon  the  Chinese,  along  with  Western 
efficiency  and  mechanical  ingenuity;  but  China’s  ability  to  get  along 
in  apparent  anarchy  is  really  evidence  of  the  profundity  of  her  civil- 
ization. Chuang-tzu  was  right  when  he  said  that  “ceremonies  and 
laws  are  the  lowest  form  of  government.”  China  would  be  in  far 
worse  condition  today  if  she  had  not  acquired  through  the  centuries 
a considerable  immunity  to  the  ravages  of  political  misgovernment. 

A peasant  in  West  China  does  not  care  whether  the  government 
in  Peking  is  republican,  or  monarchist,  or  soviet-revolutionary,  as 
long  as  he  can  harvest  and  sell  his  grain  in  peace,  and  it  would  not 
occur  to  him  that  the  manner  of  government  could  affect  the  price  of 
grain.  He  knows  that  he  can  deal  with  his  neighbors  without  a gov- 
ernment. Only  when  men  fighting  for  political  control  rob  his  farm- 
yard, conscript  his  sons,  and  ruin  his  fields  is  he  disturbed.  Until 
the  robbers  reach  his  land  he  watches  serenely  the  coming  and  going 
of  governments.  He  feels  no  need,  neither  he  nor  his  ancestors  has 
ever  felt  the  need  of  government.  And  China  is  so  vast  a continent 
that  she  can  support  a dozen  local  civil  wars  and  still  leave  most  of 


6 


her  population  to  toil  in  peace,  undisturbed  by  rackets  and  roars 
which  often  loom  larger  in  the  pages  of  the  New  York  and  Paris 
newspapers  than  they  do  in  the  village  life  of  the  bulk  of  China. 

It  is  possible  to  paint  a ghastly  picture  of  the  chaos  in  China 
today — and  it  too  will  be  true.  The  “Peking  Government”  is  a farce 
— its  writ  does  not  run  beyond  the  walls  of  the  capital,  and  even 
within  the  city  the  military  men  defy  its  orders  and  collect  illegal 
taxes  despite  its  feeble  protests.  Chang  Tso-lin  and  his  satraps  rule 
Manchuria,  Shantung,  and  Chihli  Province,  within  which  the  capital 
lies.  Feng  Yu-hsiang’s  lieutenants  hold  the  Northwest  territories  as 
an  independent  nation.  Wu  Pei-fu  and  Sun  Chuan-fong,  recently 
great  semi-independent  rulers,  have  been  reduced  to  impotence;  the 
Cantonese  Nationalist  Government  gives  not  even  lip-allegiance  to 
Peking,  and  boldly  proclaims  itself  the  true  Government  of  all  China ; 
Szechuan  in  the  West  is  divided  between  several  rival  forces;  and  in 
far-away  Yunnan  a local  potentate  rules  almost  unconscious  of  any 
outer  influence  except  that  exerted  from  the  south  by  France.  All 
the  tuchuns  and  tupans  are  more  or  less  continuously  at  war  with 
one  another,  in  variously  shifting  combinations. 

This  civil  war  in  China,  while  relatively  courteous — the  forces 
fighting  in  North  China,  for  instance,  frequently  declare  a tempo- 
rary armistice  during  a particularly  bitter  spell  of  cold  weather — 
levies  a deadly  toll  on  the  working  population.  They  pay  in  taxes, 
sometimes  collected  by  force  for  years  in  advance,  in  lost  work,  and 
in  higher  prices.  Two  years  of  civil  war  raised  the  Peking  price  of 
millet  and  kaffir  com  (grains  much  used  by  the  work-people  in  North 
China)  to  an  extent  which,  it  is  estimated,  meant  an  increased  cost 
of  living  for  a working-class  family  of  $4.50  (gold)  a month — an 
appalling  sum  in  a country  where  many  people  earn  no  more  than 
that.  The  loss  of  commerce  in  North  China  alone  in  the  sixteen 
months  of  civil  war  ending  with  December,  1925,  amounted  to  nearly 
$400,000,000 — more  than  the  entire  cost  of  construction  of  all  China’s 
five  thousand-odd  miles  of  railways. 

Shantung’s  military  governor  frequently  commandeers  every 
freight  car  in  the  province  for  troop  movements,  leaving  not  one  for 
commerce — and  even  in  peace  times  none  is  available  except  by  pay- 
ment of  an  extra  “squeeze”  of  $50  per  car.  For  months  the  British- 
American  Tobacco  Company  moved  its  goods  by  ox-cart  from  Tientsin 
to  Peking,  over  a bad  dirt  road  which  parallels  a good  railway  line — 
because  the  military  had  other  uses  for  the  freight  cars.  National 
universities  are  months  in  arrears  on  faculty  salaries. 

One  could  continue  this  recital  of  chaos  and  calamity  almost  in- 
definitely. But  China  is  for  the  most  part  organized  on  a medieval 
village  economy  which  enables  her  to  withstand  buffets  which  would 
destroy  a more  developed  nation.  She  suffers  most  where  the  foreign- 


7 


built  railways  and  foreign  machinery  have  upset  the  old  economy 
and  made  the  country  dependent  on  the  cities  and  their  trade.  There 
is  no  railroad  from  Canton  to  Central  and  North  China,  and  Canton 
Province — which  is  itself  a nation  with  more  inhabitants  than  Great 
Britain  or  France — can  suffer  wholesale  civil  war  without  affecting 
other  provinces  at  all.  Fighting  in  North  China  leaves  Shanghai 
almost  undisturbed,  and  a w'ar  in  Kiangsu  hardly  ruffles  Peking.  Ten 
miles  off  the  lines  of  march  of  contending  armies  the  peasants  plow 
their  fields  and  tend  their  cabbages  in  peace. 

Even  the  most  modern  industrial  centers  have  a local  vitality 
that  amazes  one  accustomed  to  the  intricate  interdependence  of  our 
Western  economic  structures.  Whenever  Canton  gets  a six  months’ 
respite  from  local  wars  she  begins  to  tear  down  houses  in  her  pic- 
turesque narrow  lanes  and  substitute  wide  modern  avenues,  to  build 
more  horse  roads,  to  prolong  the  roads  into  the  country,  to  develop  a 
system  of  Ford  buses;  far-away  Chengtu  in  war-ridden  Szechuan 
does  likewise;  Hangchow,  near  Shanghai,  has  transformed  itself  dur- 
ing a period  of  civil  wars.  All  over  China  local  communities  are  build- 
ing roads,  installing  electric-light  plants,  telephone  systems,  fire  com- 
panies, even  sprinkling  carts.  While  civil  war  obscures  the  newspaper 
horizons  the  industrial  revolution  quietly  takes  its  course.  Power 
looms  are  installed;  the  small-home  unit  of  production  gives  way  to 
larger  units;  sweatshops,  small  factories,  large  factories  develop  like 
mushrooms.  In  the  same  months  in  which  the  North  China  railways, 
due  to  civil  war,  lost  $400,000,000  in  trade,  the  number  of  Chinese- 
owned  cotton  mills  in  all  China  (mostly  about  Shanghai  and  Tsingtao) 
jumped  from  fifty-four  to  sixty-nine,  the  number  of  looms  from  8,500 
to  16,400,  and  the  number  of  spindles  from  a million  and  a half  to 
almost  two  million. 

China  is  not  a modem  nation;  she  is  a civilization,  a continent 
bursting  out  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Each  of  her  twenty-one  provinces 
is  bigger  than  most  European  nations.  Canton  alone — although  the 
customs  receipts  are  still  sent  away  to  pay  interest  on  the  foreign  loans 
— has  a normal  monthly  revenue  larger  than  that  of  many  European 
nations.  And  a continent  can  survive  civil  wars  as  a nation  cannot. 
The  Thirty  Years’  War  devastated  Germany,  but  France  and  Italy 
attended  to  their  own  business  relatively  undisturbed. 


8 


Ill 


Americanization  ? 

Two  or  three  Greek  temples,  a few  structures  with  traces  of  Gothic 
inspiration,  and  a miscellany  of  imitation  warehouses  and  fac- 
tory-buildings stand  on  the  campus  of  the  Chinese  government  univer- 
sity in  Nanking — an  architectural  hodgepodge  worthy  of  an  American 
State  university.  Half  a mile  away  are  a group  of  magnificent  build- 
ings with  heavy  black  overhanging  roofs  curling  skyward  at  the  cor- 
ners, carved  banisters,  and  richly  painted  paneled  ceilings,  redolent  of 
old  China.  They  are  the  lovely  Asiatic  shell  of  a Christian  mission 
college  founded  and  supported  by  American  Methodists. 

That  is  typical.  In  fifty  years  the  great  port  cities  of  China  will 
have  left  hardly  a trace  of  the  lovely  old  Chinese  architecture — ex- 
cept in  the  mission-college  buildings  and  in  the  few  joss  temples  which 
will  doubtless  be  preserved  to  gratify  the  tourist  trade.  The  foreign 
mission  schools,  hurriedly  Chinafying  themselves  to  meet  the  nation- 
alist attack,  are  spending  tens  of  thousands  of  dollars  in  adapting 
the  old  Chinese  style  to  modern  requirements.  The  sweeping  green 
roofs  and  gaily  painted  beams  of  the  Peking  Union  Medical  College, 
built  with  Rockefeller  money,  are  a joy  to  the  eye.  Nanking  Uni- 
versity and  Ginling  College  for  women  near  by  are  good  to  look  upon. 
But  in  four  months  in  China  I saw  only  one  beautiful  recent  building 
which  did  not  owe  its  existence  to  foreigners — the  Returned  Students’ 
Club  in  Peking,  a remodeled  temple;  and  there  the  students  may  be 
suspected  of  having  learned  abroad  their  respect  for  old  China. 

Shanghai  is  a great  British  city,  of  solid  British  masonry;  Tien- 
tsin is  as  foreign;  even  Canton,  which  has  providentially  escaped  the 
curse  of  great  foreign  settlements,  is  enormously  proud  that  Chinese 
have  actually  built  a ten-story  building  on  its  Bund  without  foreign 
aid ; and  Canton’s  new  buildings  are  as  foreign  to  China  as  any  suburb 
of  Cleveland,  Ohio,  or  Birmingham,  England.  Peking,  a capital  of 
politics  rather  than  of  commerce,  resists  the  current  most  effectively. 

You  can  buy  Standard  Oil  kerosene  in  any  village  in  China,  and 
British-American  cigarettes.  The  great  corporations  behind  those 
products  have  in  a generation  taught  the  Chinese  to  change  their 
habits  in  order  to  make  them  buy — the  Standard  Oil,  indeed,  used  to 
give  away  lamps  in  order  to  create  a market  for  the  strange  new  fuel. 
If  any  third  foreign  product  is  on  sale  in  the  village  it  may  well  be 
Wrigley’s  chewing  gum.  I saw  Spearmint  gum  on  sale  in  the  streets 
of  Urga,  the  capital  of  Mongolia,  700  miles  across  the  Gobi  Desert 
from  the  most  accessible  railroad. 

Architecture  and  chewing  gum  are  outward  symptoms  of  a pro- 
found inner  change.  Western  architecture  is  spreading  because  it  is 
cheaper.  Gum  and  tobacco  cost  less  than  opium.  Only  American 


9 


church-people  can  afford  painted  paneled  ceilings  and  bright  tile  roofs 
with  gargoyle  corner  ornaments.  The  Chinese — like  the  Europeans, 
like  the  whole  world— are  abandoning  old  beauties  and  old  customs 
for  cheaper  and  more  efficient  models.  They  are  becoming  modern- 
ized, standardized,  Americanized,  like  Japan.  Mystery,  leisure,  charm 
are  ebbing;  cost  accounting  is  defeating  tradition. 

The  cult  of  the  efficient  seems  a matter  of  course  to  most  West- 
erners and  almost  all  Americans,  but  to  the  Chinese  it  is  a revolution. 
Old  “China-hands”  will  laugh  at  the  suggestion  that  it  has  touched 
Chinese  psychology — but  old  China-hands  need  a vacation  and  a per- 
spective. The  Chinese  has  for  untold  centuries  followed  tradition  and 
has  believed  that  it  was  wicked  to  deviate  from  it.  His  young  men 
and  young  women  are  beginning  to  despise  custom  and  tradition ; and 
his  middle-aged  business  men,  almost  unconsciously,  are  beginning  to 
ignore  it.  It  was  only  forty  years  ago  that  the  first  railroad  tracks 
laid  in  China  were  tom  up  by  superstitious  officials;  today  they  are 
an  indispensable  instrument  of  civil  war,  as  is  the  once-despised  tele- 
graph. The  only  opposition  to  them  comes  from  Westernized  Chinese 
who  know  how  easily  international  politics  slips  into  an  engineering 
contract.  Once  a contract  is  let,  there  is  no  longer  much  difficulty 
about  arranging  to  remove  the  graves  that  beset  all  the  short  cuts. 
And  a wanderer  through  the  black  lanes  of  an  old  Chinese  city  may 
be  surprised  to  discover  that  the  squeaky  Chinese  music  that  wails 
to  the  night  is  produced  not  by  a stringed  instrument  but  by  a Victor 
record. 

Foreign  railroads,  manners,  oil,  and  architecture  are  prevailing 
because  they  are  more  efficient.  American  wheat,  when  it  costs  a 
dollar  a bushel  in  Chicago,  can  be  landed  in  Hankow,  ten  thousand 
miles  away  and  six  hundred  miles  up  the  Yangtze  from  Shanghai, 
cheaper  than  it  can  be  brought  from  Shensi,  only  a thousand  miles 
away,  where  it  may  sell  for  twenty-five  cents.  Railways  and  steam- 
ships make  the  difference;  no  wonder  they  and  their  products  are 
breaking  the  crust  of  old  China.  Foreign  clothes  have  made  less 
progress  because,  in  cold  weather  at  least,  they  are  less  efficient  than 
the  old  Chinese  robes.  Foreign  hair-dressing — including  the  bob — 
is  making  its  way  among  the  women.  Curt  foreign  manners  are  re- 
placing the  leisurely  old  Chinese  courtesy.  The  streets  are  being 
widened,  and  the  intimacy  of  the  old  Chinese  workshop,  opening  on 
a narrow  street  and  aware  of  all  that  its  neighbors  said  and  did,  is 
disappearing.  Foreign  machinery  is  revolutionizing  Chinese  industry. 
Foreign  ideas — and  the  railway,  taking  the  young  people  away  from 
their  homes  to  study  and  to  work — are  breaking  up  the  immobile 
unity  of  Chinese  family  life  upon  which  the  whole  structure  of  Con- 
fucian  ethics  is  based.  Boys  go  away  from  home  to  study,  and  refuse 
to  return  to  the  wives  of  their  parents’  choice.  In  the  port  cities  one 


10 


meets  sad  young  men  who  are  homesick  for  New  York,  prefer  fox- 
trotting to  Mah  Jong,  and  inquire  eagerly  about  the  Charleston. 

Chinese,  with  their  habit  of  explaining  everything  by  thousand- 
year-old  parallels,  will  tell  you  that  there  were  student  revolts  in  the 
Han  dynasty,  before  Christ  was  bom.  The  nationalism  of  the  student 
movement  today,  however,  passionately  denouncing  foreigners  and  all 
their  works,  is  essentially  a part  of  the  cult  of  Western  efficiency. 
This  political  nationalism,  this  conception  of  national  sovereignty  as 
a precious  right  to  be  cherished  and  preserved,  has  its  roots  in  foreign 
education  and  practice — in  part  in  Allied  war-time  propaganda.  The 
old  Chinese  patriotism — a patriotism  profounder  than  anything  known 
in  the  West — was  cultural  rather  than  political,  inclusive  rather  than 
exclusive.  It  was  a loyalty  to  a civilization  rather  than  to  a state, 
conservative  rather  than  aggressive.  It  was  powerless  to  halt  the 
intrusion  of  Western  men  and  methods  into  the  political  and  economic 
control  of  China,  and  was  satisfied  because  the  Westerners  were  so 
obviously  inferior  in  the  refinements  of  living.  The  Chinese  students 
of  today  belong  to  our  fiapper  generation;  fiaunting  their  posters 
and  banners,  parading  by  thousands  against  the  unequal  treaties,  and 
making  soap-box  speeches  about  self-determination,  they  express  con- 
tempt for  the  passivity  of  their  elders.  Theirs  is  not  the  language 
of  old  China  but  of  the  young  West.  When  it  defies  us  most  violently 
young  China  is  most  certainly  expressing  its  determination  to  be 
like  us. 

And  this  young  China  has  a significance  beyond  its  years.  There 
are  no  middle-aged  men  in  modern  China.  There  are  grand  old  men, 
survivals  of  the  old  regime;  and  young  men,  fresh  from  Western 
education.  The  old  men  cannot  adapt  themselves  to  the  swirling 
changes;  the  young  men  are  forced  to  act  beyond  their  capacities. 
“It  is  unfortunate  for  men  of  talent  to  be  born  in  China  today,”  Hu 
Shih  said  to  me  once.  “They  get  too  far  too  easily;  they  are  pushed 
rapidly  to  responsibilities  beyond  their  powers — and  they  are  done. 
Wellington  Koo  would  have  been  a splendid  permanent  under  secretary 
of  the  Foreign  Office — he  becomes  prime  minister;  Wu  Pei-fu  an  ex- 
cellent division  commander — he  has  to  try  to  be  a generalissimo;  two 
years  after  I returned  from  America  a newspaper  straw  ballot  de- 
clared me  one  of  the  twelve  greatest  living  Chinese!  When  you  have 
made  a reputation  you  have  to  do  one  of  two  things:  live  up  to  it  or 
live  on  it.  In  the  first  case,  you  are  ruined  physically;  in  the  second, 
you  are  ruined  morally  and  intellectually.  You  try  to  be  a great 
man;  you  try  to  do  too  many  things — and  you  break.” 

Boys  out  of  college  perforce  assume  jobs  fit  for  men  of  mature 
years;  college  students  do  the  work  done  in  the  West  by  men  in  their 
thirties;  and  mere  high-school  lads  do  a task  of  political  agitation 
for  which  we  would  consider  college  men  unripe.  They  do  it  badly 


11 


enough,  but  there  is  no  remedy;  the  twentieth  century  will  not  wait, 
and  the  work  has  to  be  done.  The  foreigners,  safe  in  their  com- 
pounds, complain  that  the  boys  are  losing  their  schooling;  but  the 
students  know  that  they  are  making  a new  China. 

An  old  Chinese  maxim  said  “Be  old  while  you  are  young.”  In 
the  West,  Chen  Tu-shu  told  his  Peking  students,  we  say  “Stay  young 
while  you  are  growing  old.”  Chen,  like  many  Chinese,  exaggerated 
our  virtue,  but  it  was  a lesson  old  China  needed.  Without  the 
iconoclastic  students  Sun  Yat-sen’s  long  years  of  revolutionary  ac- 
tivity would  have  been  vain ; the  students  poured  their  souls  and  blood 
into  the  Second  Revolution  that  seemed  to  fail  in  1913;  and  it  was 
the  students  of  Peking  who,  in  1919,  overturned  a rotten  and  corrupt 
government,  aroused  a sodden  nation,  and  forced  a surprised  delegation 
at  Paris  to  refuse  to  sign  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  which  confirmed 
Japan — for  three  short  years — in  possession  of  the  sacred  province 
of  Shantung.  It  was  a group  of  just  returned  students  who,  in  the 
preceding  two  years,  had  laid  the  foundations  of  a greater  revolution 
by  exalting  the  spoken  language  of  the  people,  decrying  the  artificiality 
of  the  old  written  language  of  the  scholars,  thus  opening  the  way  for 
a great  germination  of  mass  education.  It  was  a student  demonstra- 
tion in  Shanghai  which,  silenced  for  a minute  by  police-guns,  touched 
the  spark  that  set  the  Chinese  nation  aflame  in  1925  with  a fire  which 
is  still  scorching  the  proud  British  Empire.  It  is  in  the  mere  children 
who  leave  their  classes  for  what  seem  futile  patriotic  parades  that 
China’s  hope  lies. 

An  Asiatic  scholar,  asked  how  the  East  could  preserve  its  essen- 
tial Orientalism  while  suffering  industrialization,  replied:  “I  don’t 
think  there  is  anything  peculiarly  Oriental  and  Occidental.  There  is 
merely  medieval  and  modern.”  The  great  force  which  has  maintained 
China’s  identity  through  fifty  centuries  is  her  worship  of  the  past,  but 
the  mechanical  superiority  of  the  present  has  already  proved  its  power 
to  defy  that  ancient  citadel.  And  as  the  other  civilizations  of 
antiquity  crumbled  when  their  beliefs  decayed,  so  the  old  China  is 
yielding  to  the  new  West.  What  happens  in  the  port  cities  of  China 
today  will  happen  throughout  China  the  day  after  tomorrow.  The 
feverish,  abnormal  life  of  those  cities  has  a significance  out  of  all 
proportion  to  their  share  of  China’s  four  hundred  million  people;  the 
rest  of  China  too  will  adopt  the  Western — or  modern — method  of  work- 
ing hectically  while  it  works,  and  of  playing  madly  while  it  plays;  it 
too  will  forget  the  Chinese — or  medieval — knack  of  combining  work 
and  play  so  that  long  hours  seem  short.  The  port  cities  are  a hint  of 
China’s  tomorrow. 


12 


IV 


The  Missionaries 

You  see  a blank  high  wall  breaking  the  monotony  of  the  swarm- 
ing close-built  Chinese  street;  you  enter  a gate,  and  suddenly 
find  yourself  in  a miniature  Main  Street.  There  are  the  square-set 
homely  houses,  the  ample  porches,  the  trees  and  green  lawns,  the  com- 
fortable space  and  leisureliness  of  Any  Town  in  the  U.  S.  A.  There 
are  romping  white  children  in  relatively  clean,  neatly  darned  clothes; 
the  familiar  smells  of  American  food  float  out  of  the  kitchen  win- 
dows. It  is  the  missionary  compound.  Large  and  small,  there  must 
be  a thousand  of  them  scattered  through  the  cities  and  villages  of 
China.  They  are  the  centers  of  the  greatest  foreign  propaganda 
scheme  in  history;  neither  George  Creel  nor  the  Bolsheviks  ever,  in 
numbers,  in  money  spent,  or  in  system  and  method,  approached  them. 

There  are  some  8,000  missionaries  in  China,  and  of  these  more 
than  half  are  Americans.  An  extraordinary  missionary  atlas  entitled 
“The  Christian  Occupation  of  China,”  which  in  a series  of  graphic 
charts  portrays  the  invasion  of  this  alien  group,  reports  that  whereas 
in  1907  37  per  cent  of  the  foreign  missionaries  in  China  were 
American  and  52  per  cent  British,  by  1922  the  proportions  had  been 
precisely  reversed.  This  Americanizing  tendency  is  increasing,  be- 
cause America  is  now  spending  ten  million  dollars  annually  on  mission 
work  in  China,  and  no  other  country  can  afford  a tithe  of  that  sum. 
Even  the  Catholic  missions  are  passing  from  French  to  American 
control.  Increasingly,  the  missionary  invasion  of  China  is  an  Amer- 
ican campaign,  conducted  by  Americans,  with  American  methods  of 
statistical  efficiency,  gymnasium  camouflage,  mass-advertising  propa- 
ganda, and  Rotary  Club  enthusiasm.  Some  two  and  a half  million 
Chinese  now  call  themselves  Christians;  more  than  200,000  children 
daily  attend  the  7,000  Christian  missionary  schools,  while  2,000  young 
men  and  women  are  in  Christian  colleges;  and  the  330  Christian 
hospitals  with  their  18,000  beds  form  the  bulk  of  the  decent  hospital 
facilities  of  China. 

Now,  I have  never  liked  missionaries.  My  Unitarian-Quaker  up- 
bringing predisposed  me  against  the  militant  conquest  of  souls,  and 
I grew  up  increasingly  skeptical  of  all  those  things  of  which  a 
Christian  missionary  should  feel  most  sure.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
all  religions  were  attempts  from  various  angles  to  scale  a mountain 
which  reaches  beyond  the  capacity  of  the  human  mind  and  that  they 
fill  in  the  unknown  and  unknowable  with  more  or  less  satisfactory 
legends;  that  the  function  of  the  missionaries  was  to  supplant  native 
superstitions  with  unnatural  alien  superstitions,  paving  the  way  for 
the  denationalization  of  their  victims.  Certainly  I have  never  felt 
that  more  vividly  than  when  I watched  an  enthusiastic  Minnesotan 


13 


teaching  patient  Chinese  boj’^s  to  sing  a hymn — which  they  could  not 
possibly  understand — about  the  “blood  of  the  lamb”;  or  when  I sat 
through  a colorless  church  service  in  Chinese  in  a bare  little  barn  of 
an  American  mission  church  stolidly  planted  in  a colorful  Oriental 
city. 

But  . . . 

What  are  the  missionaries  there  for?  The  radicals  of  China  say 
they  are  making  the  way  easy  for  the  imperialist-conquerors ; the  Rus- 
sians regard  them  as  propagandists  for  capitalism;  the  foreign  busi- 
ness men  say  that  the  missionaries  are  just  stirring  up  trouble, 
putting  fool  ideas  into  Chinese  heads;  the  old-fashioned  circuit- 
riding missionary  says  they  are  there  to  preach  the  word  of  Jesus 
Christ ; and  the  younger  generation  talk  in  terms  of  sanitation, 
modern  schools,  improved  agriculture,  and  social  work. 

In  their  way  all  are  right.  China  has  missionaries  of  every 
description,  from  the  devout  Inland  Mission  workers  who  used  to  wear 
queues  and  still  go  about  in  Chinese  costume,  living  on  the  rice  diet  of 
their  congregations,  the  passionate  fundamentalists  who  preach 
Christianity  exactly  as  they  learned  it  in  tight  little  American  villages, 
foreign  patriots  who  identify  their  religion  with  their  nationality,  to 
medical  workers  who  have  forgotten  creed  in  healing,  teachers  who  are 
so  absorbed  in  China  that  they  remember  America  only  when  they 
have  to  ask  for  funds,  community  leaders  who  belong  to  the  race  of 
Jane  Addams  and  Lillian  Wald,  and  thinkers  who  have  climbed  to 
heights  beyond  the  walls  of  any  single  religion.  They  are  all  there, 
and  on  the  whole  they  are  considerably  more  liberal-minded  than  the 
people  who  support  them  at  home. 

These  red-hot  years  have  taught  the  missionaries  things  about 
themselves  that  they  had  never  known,  forced  movements  that  had 
been  long  in  germination  to  bloom  early.  New  buds  appeared  upon 
the  branches  which  the  gardeners  at  home  had  never  suspected  were 
there.  Every  anti-foreign  outbreak  seems  to  work  changes  in  the  mis- 
sionary garden.  “Rice  Christians”  who  join  the  churches  for  what  they 
can  get  out  of  it  drop  away;  and  the  missionaries  learn  in  blinding 
flashes  what  parts  of  their  work  have  sunk  into  Chinese  hearts  and 
what  have  not.  Some  of  them  suddenly  realize  how  far  they  have 
moved  since  they  left  home,  how  much  more  they  care  for  China  than 
for  any  form  or  creed.  Others  return  to  tamer  tasks. 

Historically,  of  course,  the  radicals  are  right.  The  stain  of  blood 
and  lawlessness  lies  on  the  missions  in  China.  The  first  American 
missionaries  went  to  China  as  the  illegal  guests  of  a trading  firm; 
and  missionaries  helped  draft,  after  the  First  Opium  War,  the  treaty 
that  established  extraterritoriality  and  gave  mission  work  its  treaty 
basis.  Nor  did  those  early  apostles  heed  the  treaty  terms;  long  before 


14 


the  Second  Opium  War  forced  new  concessions  from  China  they  made 
their  dangerous  way  into  forbidden  cities.  As  recently  as  1897  the 
death  of  two  missionaries  was  used  as  an  excuse  for  the  great  in- 
ternational grab  game  in  which  Germany  took  Tsingtao,  Russia  Port 
Arthur,  Great  Britain  Wei-hai-wei  and  the  Kowloon  new  territory, 
and  France  Kwang-chow-wan.  Today  American  and  other  foreign 
gunboats  penetrate  a thousand  miles  and  more  into  the  interior  of 
China  upon  the  excuse  of  “protecting  missionaries.”  However  many 
the  missionaries  who  have  come  to  regret  this  association  of  Chris- 
tianity with  the  foreign  gunboat,  it  is  natural  that  angry  young 
nationalists  should  call  the  Christian  organizations  and  their  officers 
the  “hawks  and  hounds  of  the  imperialists” ! 

Nor  are  the  Russians  so  far  wrong.  Inevitably  the  missionaries 
are  apostles  of  the  economic  system  from  which  they  spring.  Whether 
they  are  conscious  of  it  or  not,  they  are  advance  agents  of  the  busi- 
ness men  from  whom  they  buy.  As  one  of  their  defenders  put  it: 

The  missionary  home  in  the  interior  is  a demonstration  of  Western 
life  with  the  comforts  and  all  the  means  the  Westerner  has  used  to 
give  himself  comfort.  Were  the  merchant  deliberately  to  make  a great 
advertising  campaign  for  the  purpose  of  putting  up  a demonstration 
of  Western  materials  in  the  interior  for  sales  purposes,  he  could  not 
put  up  any  better  display  than  the  missionary  has  done  gratis. 

Naturally  the  simple  coolie  identifies  the  religion  of  the  foreigner 
with  his  higher  standard  of  living,  and  both  with  the  system  of 
production  whence  it  arises.  Too  often  the  missionary  makes  the 
same  mistake. 

He  is  under  fire,  however,  from  both  sides.  The  narrow-minded 
little  business  communities  of  China  detest  the  missionary  as  much 
as  does  a Bolshevik;  indeed  they  class  missionary  and  Bolshevik  to- 
gether. For  the  new  nationalism  is  a product  of  the  schools,  and 
many  of  the  Christian  educational  leaders  have  fanned  the  fiames  of 
discontent.  Christian  students  have  been  shot  down  along  with  non- 
Christians  in  almost  every  one  of  the  bloody  clashes  of  native  and 
foreigners  that  dot  the  recent  calendar.  Chinese  Christian  leaders 
have  sought  to  prove  that  they  were  no  whit  less  patriotic  than  those 
who  had  not  been  contaminated  by  foreign  religions,  and  many  of  the 
Western  Christians  in  China  have  openly  voiced  their  sympathy  with 
the  patriotic  movement.  Christian  schools  have  celebrated  the 
national  days  of  mourning  and  have  officially  participated  in  the  huge 
patriotic  demonstrations.  An  increasing  group  of  missionaries  has 
boldly  entered  the  forbidden  sphere  of  politics  and  insisted  that  the 
spirit  of  Christianity  requires  abolition  of  the  “unequal  treaties.” 

In  the  missionary  body  itself  the  debate  has  been  hot  and  heavy. 
The  missionary  press  reveals  a profound  ferment,  a passion  to  justify 
faith  by  works.  These  men  and  women  have  seen  their  own  converts 


15 


and  Chinese  colleagues  watching  them  with  doubt  and  distrust  in  their 
eyes. 

I have  read  scores  of  resolutions  and  hundreds  of  letters  from 
missionaries  all  over  China,  and  while  there  is  many  a voice  to  say, 
“Business  enterprises  would  suffer  most  from  abolition  and  we  are 
dependent  upon  business  men  for  a very  large  part  of  the  means  with 
which  we  carry  on  our  work,”  a commoner  opinion  is  that  “More  is 
to  be  gained  by  letting  it  be  known  that  we  are  preaching  our  gospel 
with  no  dependence  upon  gunboats  or  laws  which  give  us  special 
favors.” 

Dependence  upon  gunboats  and  treaties  was  only  one  symptom  of 
the  alien  arrogance  of  the  old  missionaries.  They  believed  it  their 
duty  to  impose  Christianity,  with  all  its  Western  forms,  on  China. 
They  never  stopped  to  question  whether,  man  for  man,  we  Western 
Christians  were  superior  to  the  Chinese.  The  Christian  schools  began 
as  Western  schools,  taught  by  Westerners,  largely  as  bait  for  converts. 
But  increasingly  they  have  focused  on  education  as  an  end  in  itself 
rather  than  upon  conversion,  and  the  junior  schools  have  been  going 
under  Chinese  control;  in  these  last  years  of  ferment  the  colleges  too 
have  had  to  look  for  advice  and  leadership  to  their  Chinese  faculties. 

The  change  has  brought  some  unlooked-for  results.  Two  years 
ago  daily  chapel  attendance  was  compulsory  at  virtually  every 
Christian  school  in  China;  so  were  courses  in  religion.  Today  nearly 
half  the  higher  schools  have  made  both  voluntary,  and  another  year 
will  see  a change  in  the  majority.  The  Government  requires  reg- 
istered schools  to  eliminate  compulsory  religious  instruction,  to  have 
a Chinese  president  or  vice-president,  and  Chinese  majority  on  the 
board  of  control,  and  to  declare  that  the  propagation  of  religion  is 
not  its  purpose.  The  Chinese — faculty  and  student,  Christian  and 
non-Christian — ^want  registration,  which  opens  the  road  to  govern- 
ment jobs  for  the  graduates;  and  the  foreign  teachers,  sometimes 
reluctantly,  are  following  their  lead.  “It  would  be  un-Christian  for  a 
school  in  China  not  to  do  willingly  what  the  Government  would  enforce 
if  it  could,”  says  the  president  of  Yenching  University  in  Peking. 
And  what  modern  government  would  permit  a corps  of  aliens,  teach- 
ing largely  in  a foreign  language,  propagating  a foreign  religion,  to 
dominate  its  school  system?  The  missionaries  begin  to  see  that  soon 
they  may  not  be  permitted  to  give  even  voluntary  courses  in  religion. 
“But  we  can  make  our  education  Christian  by  the  spirit  in  which 
we  conduct  it  even  if  we  are  forbidden  to  give  any  direct  Christian 
teaching,”  said  President  Burton.  Schools  like  Lingnan  University 
at  Canton  are  doing  that. 

Slowly  and  impressively  China  gathers  into  herself  the  men  and 
women  who  work  there  and  stamps  them  with  its  own  ancient  civiliza- 
tion. I once  argued  for  hours  with  an  old  missionary  vainly  trying 


16 


to  find  some  virtue  in  the  Christian  teaching  for  which  he  could 
produce  no  parallel  from  the  Chinese  classics.  Missionaries  who  study 
Chinese  thought  acquire  something  of  its  tolerant  eclecticism.  The 
Chinese  have  never  fought  religious  wars  and  cannot  understand  our 
emphasis  on  doctrines,  our  conviction  that  religions  must  be  mutually 
exclusive.  Our  little  sects  mean  nothing  to  them;  if  they  accept 
Christianity  they  but  add  it  to  minds  already  deeply  molded  by 
Confucian,  Taoist,  and  Buddhist  teaching. 

The  old  type  of  missionary  who  refused  to  show  distrust  in  God 
by  being  vaccinated  (the  smallpox  rate  among  missionaries  in  China 
is  one  hundred  times  that  in  the  United  States,  and  the  typhoid  rate 
is  thirty-three  times  that  of  the  American  army)  is  fading  into  the 
hinterland.  The  new  type  is  an  emissary  of  athletic  sports,  of  hygiene, 
of  schools,  of  mechanics — needed  in  China,  although  incorrigibly 
alien.  Even  he  may  find  his  role  declining;  as  in  Japan,  the  number 
of  foreign  missionaries  will  fall,  and  the  Christian  church  in  China, 
if  it  continues  at  all,  will  have  to  represent  a kind  of  Christianity  as 
much  modified  by  Oriental  habits  as  what  we  call  Christianity  has 
been  modified,  in  two  thousand  years,  by  our  Western  history.  The 
permanent  service  of  the  missionaries  is  likely  to  be  less  in  the 
religious  field  than  as  a bridge  between  two  civilizations  that  had  lost 
contact  with  each  other.  In  the  early  days  the  missionaries  forced 
contacts  where  they  were  not  wanted;  but  they  may  somewhat  lessen 
the  frictions  of  tomorrow.  Bringing  science  to  the  East  as  a gift  of 
God  rather  than  as  an  efficient  aid  to  lower  production  costs,  the 
missionaries  may  soften  the  harsh  process  of  adaptation  to  the  in- 
dustrial West,  and  ease  the  break-up  of  the  ancient  family  system 
which  is  an  inevitable  part  of  that  inevitable  process.  Romantic 
lovers  of  the  past  will  deplore  that  necessity ; but , history  marches 
roughshod  over  romance. 


17 


V 


China:  The  World’s  Proletariat 

IN  China  the  economic  and  nationalist  struggles  are  inextricably 
intertwined.  For  China  has  the  greatest  cheap-labor  supply  on 
earth.  It  is  good  labor,  too — and  European  capital,  which  at  first 
merely  bought  native  products  cheap,  has  for  two  or  three  decades 
been  attempting  to  instal  Western  factories  with  Western  methods  to 
make  Western  products  with  the  labor  of  China.  When  New  England 
passed  anti-child  labor  laws  it  exported  its  low  child-size  machines 
to  China  as  well  as  to  our  own  South,  and  the  little  girls  of  China 
are  today  competing  with  the  children  of  our  South  Atlantic  States. 
And  in  China  this  whole  industrial  system,  whether  the  immediate 
employer  be  a Chinese  or  a foreigner,  is  rightly  regarded  as  a Western 
importation. 

The  mills  have  sprouted  like  mushrooms  along  the  coast  and 
rivers  of  China.  The  first  cotton  mill  came  to  China  in  1890;  there 
were  14  in  1906,  with  400,000  spindles;  42,  with  1,154,000  spindles, 
in  1916;  83,  with  2,666,000  spindles,  in  1923;  and  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  the  number  will  not  continue  to  double  every  six  or 
seven  years.  China  still  imports  the  blue  cotton  cloth  which  has 
become  the  national  uniform  of  her  masses — a fantastic  statistician 
once  figured  that  China’s  annual  consumption  of  cotton  cloth  would 
pave  a roadway  sixty  feet  wide  to  the  moon.  And  the  workers  in 
these  mills  live  in  a manner  that  would  shame  a self-respecting  pig. 

All  about  the  industrial  outskirts  of  the  great  Western  city  which 
is  the  pride  of  the  foreigners  in  Shanghai  one  may  see  the  dis- 
reputable sheds,  built  of  bamboo,  mud,  lime,  and  straw.  Six  or  eight 
people  live  in  one-room  floorless  huts,  through  whose  flimsy  roofs  the 
rain  leaks  in  a storm;  whose  walls,  falling  or  riddled  with  holes,  af- 
ford no  privacy.  There  is  no  drainage,  no  lavatories;  garbage-heaps 
and  cess-pools — or  rather  cess-puddles — surround  the  hovels.  A big 
rain  often  floods  the  whole  neighborhood,  and  the  ragged  babies  wade 
about  coated  with  mud  and  filth.  In  smaller  cities,  where  the  con- 
centration is  not  so  great  or  so  sudden,  conditions  are  somewhat 
decenter.  But  while  a few  enlightened  Chinese  talk  of  decentraliza- 
tion, the  factory  owners  continue  to  build  their  prisons  in  the  over- 
crowded centers  where  they  can  be  sure  of  coal  and  raw  materials — 
Tienstin,  Tsingtao,  Shanghai,  Hangchow,  Wusih,  Hankow,  and  the 
rest. 

Wages  are  desperately  low.  They  can  best  be  understood  when 
translated  into  goods.  A Shanghai  cotton-mill  worker  would  have 
to  work  two  weeks  to  buy  a hat ; longer  to  buy  a pair  of  leather  shoes. 
A pair  of  sheets  would  cost  a month’s  wages,  an  overcoat  three 
months’  toil;  a dally  paper  one-tenth  of  the  daily  income;  a ton  of 


18 


coal  four  months’  earnings.  Of  course  these  industrial  workers  do  not 
use  coal,  wear  hats  or  shoes  or  overcoats,  or  buy  newspapers — they 
live  on  a lower  level.  And  yet  these  wages  seem  high  to  Chinese 
of  the  coolie  type;  there  is  no  dearth  of  labor.  It  flocks  in  from  the 
country,  constantly  replenishing  the  worn-out  supply,  for  the  working 
life  of  a Chinese  mill-hand  is  generously  estimated  at  from  two  to 
eight  years. 

In  the  cotton  mills  and  silk  filatures  (where  silk  is  reeled  from 
cocoons  which  bob  up  and  down  in  basins  of  boiling  water)  the  vast 
majority  of  the  workers  are  women  and  children.  Men  complain  that 
they  are  discriminated  against  in  Shanghai,  which  is  true,  largely 
because  they  are  more  likely  to  form  labor  unions  and  strike.  The 
Shanghai  Child  Labor  Commission  found  in  1923-1924  that  of  154,000 
workers  in  the  mills  it  studied  more  than  86,000  were  women  and 
more  than  22,000  were  children  under  12.  (It  is  worth  while  noting 
that  in  the  Japanese-owned  mills  of  Shanghai  only  5.5  per  cent  of  the 
workers  were  children  under  12,  and  in  the  Chinese  only  13  per  cent; 
while  the  British  mills  had  nearly  18  per  cent  children  and  the  French 
and  Italian  46  per  cent.  The  few  American  mills  had  a slightly  lower 
percentage  than  the  Chinese.)  In  the  silk  filatures  of  South  China 
nearly  all  the  workers  are  women  and  girls.  Often  the  children  are 
brought  in  from  the  country  by  a contractor,  who  follows  disaster  like 
vultures  and  pays  starving  parents  about  a dollar  a month  for  a 
contract  which  amounts  to  slavery;  the  girls  live  for  years  in  his 
compound,  eating  his  food,  or  in  the  factories,  eating  factory  rice, 
working  sometimes  fifteen  or  sixteen  hours  a day,  and  often  sleeping 
on  the  floor  beneath  their  machines. 

It  is  the  common  excuse  of  the  mill-owner  that  the  mothers  do  not 
want  to  leave  their  children  unguarded  at  home,  and  doubtless  that  is 
sometimes  true.  Walking  through  these  dimly  lit  mill-rooms  one  sees 
baskets  containing  children,  sleeping  or  awake,  between  the  whirring, 
clacking  machines.  Sometimes  a tot  of  two  or  three  sits  cheerfully 
playing  with  cotton  waste  in  the  aisles  through  which  the  foreman 
guides  the  visitor.  Girls  a little  older  help  their  mothers  tend  the 
rows  of  spindles,  and  the  deftness  of  five-year-old  fingers  is  amazing. 
But  when  I asked  ages  of  children  smaller  than  my  seven-year-old 
son,  the  foreman  always  replied  monotonously  “twelve.”  Except  in 
the  Japanese  mills  little  attempt  is  made  to  keep  the  children  out  of 
the  mills;  there  a rigid  standard  of  height  is  set,  and  maintained. 

Native-owned  mills  are  likely  to  be  dirtier  and  more  dangerous 
than  foreign-owned.  The  machinery  is  seldom  protected,  the  ventila- 
tion is  atrocious,  the  crowding  terrific.  But  even  a foreigner  can 
sense  the  more  human  atmosphere.  In  the  Naigaiwata  mills  (Japa- 
nese-owned) of  Shanghai,  where  the  great  1925  strike  began,  wages 
are  fair;  hours  relatively  short  (only  IOV2!),  and  all  sorts  of  modern 


19 


welfare-devices  have  been  installed.  But  the  girls  stopped  talking 
and  kept  their  eyes  rigidly  on  their  machines  when  the  foreman  apH 
peared  and  the  foreign  visitors  passed  by.  In  a far  dingier  Chinese 
mill  the  girls  showed  no  fear  of  the  foreman,  and  pointed  and  giggled 
at  the  ridiculously  garbed  aliens  who  marched  through  the  aisles. 
One  of  the  demands  of  the  strikers  last  summer  was  that  foremen 
should  no  longer  be  armed,  and  the  demand  was  typical  of  the  spirit 
of  the  efficient,  clean,  militaristic  Japanese  mill. 

There  are  vast  profits  to  be  made  in  these  early  stages  of  Chinese 
industrialization.  But  I doubt  if  the  white  men  are  to  have  as  large 
a share  in  it  as  they  expected.  There  are  fewer  British  cotton  mills 
in  China  today  than  there  were  three  years  ago,  and  there  are  no 
American  cotton  mills.  Even  the  Japanese,  who  so  proudly  identify 
themselves  in  China  with  the  imperialist  West,  are  feeling  the  pinch 
of  native  competition  that  is  driving  the  British  to  the  wall.  The 
great  Naigaiwata  mills  have  been  on  a kind  of  intermittent  strike  for 
nearly  two  years — and  it  is  a safe  guess  that  the  strikes  are  fomented 
and  financed  rather  by  Chinese  competitors  than  by  the  commonly 
blamed  Russians. 

The  Chinese  employer  straddles  the  class  issue.  He  does  not  yet 
identify  himself  with  the  employing  class  of  the  world.  Recently  he 
has  openly  encouraged  the  working  class  to  fight  for  him  the  national 
battle  against  his  foreign  competitors.  The  Shanghai  strike  of  1925 
was  directed  and  subsidized  by  the  Chinese  Chamber  of  Commerce; 
the  Canton  boycott  of  Hongkong  in  1925-1926  was  largely  financed  by 
Chinese  business  men  in  other  parts  of  China  and  by  the  prosperous 
Chinese  community  of  Singapore  in  the  Straits  Settlements.  And  not 
unprofitably.  In  South  China  the  native  Nanyang  Brothers  thus  won 
a monopoly  of  the  vast  cigarette  business,  at  the  expense  of  the  British- 
American  Tobacco  Co.,  which  outstrips  them  in  the  North.  I shall 
not  soon  forget  the  enthusiasm  with  which  a rich  Chinese  banker  de- 
scribed the  Naigaiwata  strikes,  and  continued:  “We  have  waked  up. 
We  see  now  how  the  foreigners  have  run  China,  and  we  are  planning 
to  change  things.  For  instance,  the  British  have  a monopoly  of 
Yangtze  River  shipping.  Well,  we  may  not  be  as  efficient  mariners  as 
they,  but  I think  we  can  find  ways  of  making  it  very  hard  for  them 
to  do  business  at  all.” 

If  the  employer  has  no  clear-cut  sense  of  class  interest,  the  worker 
too  is  confused.  Class  consciousness  in  the  Western  sense  is  only 
beginning  to  exist  in  the  treaty  ports ; but  race  consciousness  takes  its 
place.  In  foreign  households  even  the  domestic  servants — the  most 
isolated  and  individualistic  of  industrial  groups — struck  in  Shanghai 
and  Canton  in  1925 ; and  if  the  strike  was  enforced  in  many  instances 
by  terroristic  methods  it  is  still  significant  that  it  could  be  enforced 
at  all  among  the  scattered  individuals  of  the  group.  I doubt  if  the 


20 


domestic  servants  of  Chinese  families  can  be  organized  for  decades  to 
come,  but  any  kind  of  strike  can  be  enforced  against  foreigners. 

The  labor-union  movement  in  China  is  less  than  a decade  old — ■ 
inevitably  it  is  younger  than  the  factory  movement,  although  prece- 
dents can  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  guilds.  Shanghai  organized 
feeble  unions  in  1916;  not  until  1919  were  labor  unions  active  in 
Canton;  and  the  first  notably  successful  industrial  strike,  that  of  the 
Hongkong  mechanics,  occurred  in  1920.  The  epic  peak  of  the  move- 
ment is  again  in  Hongkong,  in  the  amazing  seamen’s  strike  of  1922. 
Twenty-three  thousand  Chinese  seamen  struck,  and  a few  days  later 
more  than  a hundred  thousand  other  workers  joined  them.  Hong- 


The  daily  life  of  the  lower  classes — poster  from 
a Canton  wall 


kong  was  paralyzed;  the  lordly  white  men  had  to  do  their  own  coolie 
work.  The  police  forbade  meetings,  closed  the  union  headquarters, 
deported  leaders.  But  the  strike  held.  After  forty  days  the  seamen 
won  the  wage  increase  they  demanded  and  recognition  of  their  union 
— and  the  police  had  to  restore  the  union  signs  which  they  had  torn 
from  the  union  building  before  the  workers  would  return.  That  was 
a year  of  strikes — in  the  Pingshiang  coal  mines  and  the  Hanyang  steel 
mills,  among  the  Peking  school-teachers,  the  weavers  of  Changsha,  the 
wheelbarrow-coolies  of  a northern  city  (they  wanted  their  hours  re- 
duced from  fourteen  to  twelve),  the  ricksha  coolies  of  Soochow,  in 
the  Canton  silk  filatures  and  matshed  factories — all  over  China.  Six 
months  saw  thirty-one  strikes  in  Shanghai  alone,  involving  cotton 
mills,  silk  mills,  the  municipal  electricity  plant  and  water  works,  the 
telephone  company,  native  and  foreign  tobacco  companies,  a hospital. 


21 


the  comb-makers,  joss-paper  workers,  cargo  coolies,  sampan-men, 
laundrymen,  cabinet-makers,  and  boat-builders.  There  was  a trade 
boom  that  year  and  most  of  the  strikes  were  quickly  won.  Enthusiasts 
saw  Chinese  labor  taking  its  place  with  the  great  organized  movements 
of  the  West. 

But  none  of  these  unions  had  permanent  organizations  which 
would  withstand  a period  of  depression.  When  industries  are  boom- 
ing in  China  new  workers  flock  in  from  the  villages ; in  bad  times  they 
return  to  their  cabbage-fields.  Except  in  Shanghai  and  perhaps  in 
some  of  the  mine-fields  there  is  hardly  anywhere  a permanent  working 
class.  In  1923  Wu  Pei-fu  smashed  the  union  on  the  Peking-Hankow 
Railway  and  beheaded  the  leaders,  for  which  act  he  was  heartily 
praised  by  the  foreign  press.  A silk  workers’  strike  in  Shanghai  was 
vigorously  repressed.  The  Canton  Government  encourages  the  unions; 
the  Northern  militarists,  more  or  less  allied  with  foreign  as  well  as 
native  business  men,  smash  the  unions  with  a ruthlessness  hardly 
knovsTi  even  in  America. 

Unrealized,  a strange  thing  has  happened.  The  unions  have  be- 
come the  instruments  of  the  new  national  consciousness.  They  were 
from  the  first  vaguely  allied  with  the  radical  Kuomintang  Party  of 
the  South.  Sun  Yat-sen  more  and  more  leaned  on  them  as  his  most 
trustworthy  supporters.  Of  course  the  Russians,  wherever  they  saw 
an  opening,  helped  swell  the  rising  protest.  Naturally,  too,  the  mili- 
tarists of  the  old  regime  and  the  foreigners  opposed  them.  The  great 
outburst  of  anti-foreign  feeling  in  1925,  that  amazing  uprising  of 
a nation,  significantly  began  with  a strike  in  the  Japanese  mills  of 
Tsingtao  and  the  shots  which  sparked  the  flame  were  fired  by  British 
police  on  strike  sympathizers  in  Shanghai.  Chang  Tso-lin,  who  has 
always  been  supported  by  the  Japanese,  closed  the  offices  of  the  Shang- 
hai General  Labor  Union  that  summer,  and  a few  months  later,  when 
the  foreign  courts  of  the  International  Settlement  handed  over  the 
chairman  of  the  union,  Liu  Hwa,  to  agents  of  Sun  Chuan-fong,  who 
was  more  or  less  supported  by  the  Anglo-American  group  in  Shang- 
hai, Liu  Hwa  disappeared  and  was  believed  to  have  been  slain  at 
night.  The  militarists  naturally  and  unconsciously  align  themselves 
with  foreign  capital,  and  the  old  compradore  type  of  Chinese  mer- 
chant works  with  them.  But  the  young  alert  business  men,  precisely 
those  who  have  had  their  training  under  foreign  conditions,  are  likely 
to  join  the  workers,  so  intense  is  their  nationalism.  If  China’s  mili- 
tarists are  not  strong  enough  to  oust  the  foreigners  by  force,  there  is 
in  the  unions  a power  which  can  destroy  the  economic  roots  of  the 
foreigner’s  position. 


22 


VI 


Canton — Nest  of  Nationalism 

Canton,  Febrtcary  11,  1926 

[This  picture  of  Canton  was  drawn  on  the  spot  in  the  germinal 
days  of  the  movement,  before  the  Northern  expedition  carried  its 
spirit  across  China.] 

“TN  Peking  you  will  see  the  past  of  China;  in  Shanghai,  the  pres- 
1 ent ; in  Canton,  the  future,”  Harry  Ward  told  me  before  I came  to 
the  East.  It  is  true.  Canton  is,  in  a real  sense,  the  pulsing  heart  of 
China  which  drives  the  fresh  red  blood  back  into  the  primitive  interior 
and  out  into  the  foreign-ruled  treaty  ports. 

At  Swatow,  in  the  north  of  Canton  province,  I saw  a British 
sloop  floating  silent  with  her  powerful  guns  trained  on  the  flat  city. 
She  had  ammunition  enough  behind  those  guns  to  blow  the  little  one- 
storied houses  to  bits  and  heap  their  ancient  tiles  high  in  the  narrow 
streets — but  she  could  not  make  the  poverty-stricken  people  buy  British 
goods,  unload  British  cargoes,  or  cook  or  sew  or  make  beds  for  British 
subjects.  All  the  science  and  might  and  money  of  the  British  Empire 
was  helpless  before  the  united  national  will  of  those  Chinese. 

Canton  has  been  pecking  at  the  British  Empire  for  nearly  seven 
months.  Gradually  the  British  Empire  has  become  aware  that  what 
seemed  a mosquito  has  poison  in  its  bite.  Hongkong,  the  greatest 
port  in  the  East,  is  a parasite  upon  Canton,  and  when  Canton  turned 
against  Hongkong,  Hongkong  paled.  In  1924  Hongkong’s  harbor 
averaged  210  vessels  a day.  When  Canton  began  to  strike  against 
Hongkong,  and  the  Hongkong  Chinese  joined,  Hongkong’s  shipping 
dropped  to  34  vessels  a day.  Real-estate  values  shrank;  they  have 
been  cut  in  half.  Hundreds  of  little  Arms  failed.  The  share  values 
of  the  great  British  banks,  the  strongest  financial  institutions  in  the 
East,  like  the  Hongkong  and  Shanghai  Banking  Corporation  and  the 
Chartered  Bank  of  India,  Australia,  and  China,  dropped  more  than  a 
hundred  points.  In  six  months  British  shipping  at  Canton  fell  from 
nearly  three  million  tons  in  1924  to  a third  of  a million  in  1925.  To 
save  Hongkong  the  British  Government  at  London  voted  a loan  of 
three  million  pounds  sterling.  That  may  not  be  enough;  the  strike 
is  still  on.  Canton  is  giving  the  British  Empire  a hint  of  what  is 
coming  if  it  attempts  to  cling  to  what  it  has  stolen  from  China. 

In  the  dormitory  in  Canton  where  a hundred  striking  tailors  from 
Hongkong  live  is  a large  poster  labeled  “Crimes  of  the  British  in 
China,”  which  reads: 

1.  Opium  smuggling;  spreading  the  opium  evil. 

2.  Seizure  of  Hongkong;  encroachment  on  Tibet. 

3.  Establishment,  by  force,  of  foreign  concessions  and  settlements; 
creation  of  mixed  court. 


23 


4.  The  British  were  the  first  to  force  China  to  recognize  foreign 
consular  jurisdiction. 

5.  They  forced  indemnities  upon  China  and  seized  the  customs 
control. 

6.  They  fastened  upon  China  a fixed  customs  tariff  detrimental 
to  Chinese  industry. 

7.  They  oppress  the  Hongkong  and  Shameen  workers. 

8.  They  shot  down  the  patriotic  students  and  citizens  of  Shanghai, 
Canton,  and  Hankow. 

I cite  it  as  a symptom.  Beside  it  are  pasted  photographs  of  the  vic- 
tims of  the  “Shakee  massacre”  on  June  23,  when  machine-guns  from 
the  foreign  settlement  on  the  island  of  Shameen  killed  fifty-two 
Chinese  and  wounded  117  more. 

Shameen  itself  gives  you  an  eery  sense  of  what  a plague-stricken 
city  must  be  like.  You  leave  the  swarming  Chinese  street  with  its 
smells  and  shouts  and  its  teeming  crowds  of  sweating  coolies,  stum- 
bling under  monumental  burdens  of  squealing  pigs,  squawking  hens, 
flopping  fish;  cabbages,  oranges,  bean-cake,  rice;  cloth,  metal,  stone, 
brick;  you  wind  your  way  through  the  barbed-wire  and  sand-bag 
defenses,  pass  the  bearded  Sikh  guards — and  suddenly  find  yourself 
in  a world  of  incredible  and  amazing  peace.  Here  are  shade-trees; 
but  the  grass  that  was  once  a smooth  lawn  has  grown  high,  gone  to 
seed  and  withered.  A row  of  dead  palms  in  pots  slumbers  upon  the 
consular  fence.  Barbed  wire  and  sand-bags  are  everywhere.  Your 
own  footsteps  resound  alarmingly  in  the  dead  silence.  Rubbish  has 
not  been  collected,  and  fallen  leaves  cover  the  bricks  of  a half-finished 
building  where  the  Chinese  workmen  dropped  their  tools  last  June. 
The  British  Consul  sits  alone  in  his  office  with  nothing  whatever  to 
do  these  days  except  to  meditate  on  June  23.  Once  a day  the  British 
steamer  comes  up  from  Hongkong,  carrying  mail  and  food  for  the 
exiles  on  Shameen.  It  is  not  allowed  to  berth  at  the  wharf ; it  an- 
chors in  mid-stream,  watched  by  armed  picket-boats  of  the  Canton- 
Hongkong  Strike  Committee,  who  see  to  it  that  no  contraband,  human 
or  otherwise,  gets  ashore.  Foreigners  may  land  where  they  will — the 
theory  seems  to  be  that  without  employees  they  are  futile  and  harm- 
less; Chinese  may  not  go  to  or  come  from  Hongkong  without  a permit 
from  the  strikers;  and  British  goods,  except  for  use  on  Shameen,  are 
contraband. 

“I  don’t  see  why  this  strike  should  not  continue  until  next  Christ- 
mas,” the  British  Consul  said  to  me.^  Neither  do  I,  unless  a different 
type  of  British  official  supplants  him — a new  type  capable  of  consider- 
ing without  a shudder  the  thought  of  letting  Chinese  live  on  Hong- 
kong’s peak  and  vote  for  members  of  Hongkong’s  council.  The  Chinese 
are  learning — particularly  in  Canton — that  by  boycott  they  can  hurt 

' It  ended  shortly  before  Christmas,  after  lasting  more  than  a year  and  a half. 


24 


the  proud  foreigners  more  than  the  foreigners  can  hurt  them.  They 
still  have  many  scores  to  settle. 

The  particular  present  trouble  in  Canton  dates  back  to  the  “Shakee 
massacre,”  which  the  British  call  the  “attack  on  Shameen”;  and  the 
Shakee  affair  had  its  roots  in  decades  of  Chinese  history.  “They  call 
us  revolutionary!”  said  one  Cantonese.  “In  our  forefathers’  day  the 
foreigners  threw  Chinese  overboard  because  they  burned  down  the 
foreign  factories.  Now  that  they’ve  massacred  the  Chinese  we  don’t 
retaliate  in  blood.  Perhaps  we  ought  to.”  Shameen  itself  was  built 
during  one  of  the  opium  wars,  when  the  British  occupied  and  ruled 
Canton.  Chinese,  to  the  present  day,  may  not  sit  on  the  Shameen 
benches,  walk  along  the  Shameen  bund,  or  tie  their  sampans  to  the 
Shameen  landing-stages.  Until  a few  years  ago  Chinese  might  not 
enter  Shameen  through  the  same  gate  as  white  foreigners.  These 
things  rankle  and  are  remembered.  Coolies  do  not  forget  when  they 
are  kicked  or  cuffed.  A British  officer  in  Swatow  harbor  gave  an  un- 
sympathetic explanation  of  the  boycott  there.  “The  chief  Red  here,” 
he  said,  “the  man  that  stands  on  the  dock  and  kicks  the  British  cargoes 
out — he  used  to  be  No.  1 man  at  the  Taiku  Club.  Some  bloke  must 
have  got  tight  some  night  and  given  him  a kick  in  the  rear  that  he  still 
remembers.”  The  officer  thought  it  a joke;  it  may  have  been  pain- 
fully true.  And  if  Canton  is  the  future  of  China,  it  means  something. 

Englishmen — and  some  of  the  treaty-port  Americans — call  the 
Cantonese  “Reds.”  It  is  a convenient  way  to  discredit  an  inconven- 
ient group.  But  the  Cantonese  are,  in  certain  significant  ways, 
“Red.”  The  boycott  is  maintained  primarily  by  a working-class  organ- 
ization rather  than  by  intellectuals  and  students.  These  strikers  come 
from  Hongkong  and  Hongkong  and  Shanghai  are  the  two  centers  of 
working-class  consciousness  in  China  today — two  cities  governed  by  the 
British  and  dominated  by  British  capital.  The  British  complain  of 
Russian  propaganda  among  the  Chinese  workers,  but  their  own  fac- 
tories and  factory  methods  are  doing  more  to  strengthen  working-class 
consciousness  in  China  than  all  the  propaganda  agents  Russia  could 
export  in  a hundred  years.  Not  the  Russians  but  the  British  made 
this  strike.  Canton  is  an  interesting  study  for  would-be  investors 
who  like  gunboats  to  accompany  their  dollars. 

Russian  influence  indubitably  exists  in  Canton.  Nearly  three 
years  ago,  discouraged  with  the  Westerners,  Sun  Yat-sen  invited  Soviet 
Russians  to  help  him  in  the  Southern  pi'ovince.  Sun  had  met  Adolf 
Joffe,  the  Soviet  representative,  in  January,  1923,  at  Shanghai,  where 
after  long  conversations  they  issued  to  the  press  a joint  statement 
which  is  worth  recalling:  “Dr.  Sun  Yat-sen  holds  that  the  Communistic 
order  or  even  the  Soviet  system  cannot  actually  be  introduced  into 
China  because  there  do  not  exist  here  the  conditions  for  the  success- 
ful establishment  of  either  Communism  or  Sovietism.  This  view  is 


25 


entirely  shared  by  Mr.  Joffe,  who  is  further  of  the  opinion  that 
China’s  paramount  and  most  pressing  problem  is  to  achieve  national 
unification  and  attain  full  national  independence;  and  regarding  this 
great  task  he  has  assured  Dr.  Sun  Yat-sen  that  China  has  the  warmest 
sympathy  of  the  Russian  people  and  can  count  on  the  support  of 
Russia.” 

In  February  Dr.  Sun  returned  to  become  the  nominal  head  of  the 
aforesaid  Canton  Government,  in  which  in  his  own  lifetime  he  held 
little  real  power.  In  August  Borodin  arrived,  at  Dr.  Sun’s  invitation, 
and  the  Russian-Canton  collaboration  that  so  alarms  the  treaty-port 
press  of  China  began,  on  the  platform  jointly  announced  by  Sun  Yat- 
sen  and  Joffe.  The  Soviet  Government  had  already  announced  its 
readiness  to  abolish  the  unequal  treaties  in  so  far  as  they  concerned 
Russia;  the  new  alliance  sought  to  force  the  other  Powers  to  do  as 
much.  In  September  Dr.  Sun  asked  the  diplomatic  corps  to  instruct 
the  foreign  customs  official  to  turn  over  to  his  government  the  cus- 
toms surplus  of  Kwangtung  Province,  as  had  been  done  in  1919-1920. 
The  Powers  did  not  reply.  In  mid-December  he  threatened  to  seize 
the  custom-houses;  the  Powers  then  announced  their  refusal,  and  to 
support  it  an  international  fleet  including  gunboats  flying  the  British, 
American,  French,  Italian,  Portuguese,  and  Japanese  flags  appeared 
in  the  river  opposite  Canton.  Nothing  could  have  strengthened  the 
Russian  position  more.  On  December  31  Dr.  Sun — who  a few  years 
before  had  been  pleading  with  the  Western  Powers  to  invest  more 
capital  in  China — said  in  a speech  at  the  Canton  Y.  M.  C.  A.:  “We 
no  longer  look  to  the  West.  Our  faces  are  turned  toward  Russia.” 
Today  there  are  thirty  or  forty  Russians  in  the  service  of  the  Canton 
Government.  Most  of  them  are  aides  to  Chiang  Kai-shek  at  the 
Whampoa  Military  Academy;  one  is  adviser  to  the  Canton  navy; 
one  is  helping  revise  the  chaotic  system  of  multifarious  taxation. 
“They’ve  been  a force  for  honesty  and  efficiency,”  said  a responsible 
American  in  Canton.  “The  trouble  is,  they  are  Russians.  If  they 
were  British  or  Americans  we  would  not  object.”  I did  not  find  one 
American  or  Englishman  in  Canton  who  had  ever  met  or  tried  to  meet 
Borodin  or  had  taken  the  trouble  to  attempt  to  verify  any  of  the 
wild  stories  they  told  about  him. 

Michael  Borodin  is  a big,  strong,  black-mustached  Russian  with 
a hearty  hand-grasp,  a deep,  serious  voice,  and  a warming  smile. 
He  has  no  authority,  officially;  he  gives  no  orders;  yet  many  think 
him  the  most  powerful  man  in  the  province.  There  are  no  Russian 
warships  to  back  Borodin;  there  is  not  even  a large  Russian  trade 
interest  in  Canton.  In  fact,  there  have  not  been  twenty  thousand 
tons  of  Russian  shipping  in  the  Pearl  River  since  Borodin  arrived 
a year  and  a half  ago.  Borodin  has  won  his  influence  over  the  group 
of  men  who  govern  Canton,  to  whom  he  cannot  speak  in  their  owm 


26 


language,  by  the  proved  value  of  his  advice  and  the  po-wer  of  his 
personality. 

The  young  men  who  are  governing  Canton  turn  to  him  for  advice ; 
they  believe  that  his  counsel  has  proved  disinterested  and  good. 
“We  have  no  fear  of  Russia  in  South  China,”  said  C.  C.  Wu,  the  mayor 
of  Canton,  who  is  regarded  as  a moderate.  “Why  should  we?  She 
has  no  trade  interests  here,  and  no  surplus  capital  to  invest.  She 
has  renounced  all  special  privileges,  and  has  no  dangerous  friends ; all 
the  imperialist  nations  are  her  enemies.  It  is  to  her  interest  today 
to  have  China  strong,  united,  and  independent — not  a tool  which  the 
West  can  turn  against  her.  That  is  our  interest  too.  Communism 
is  impossible  in  China  today;  it  need  not  even  be  feared.  Ten  years 
hence,  when  the  unequal  treaties  are  abolished,  who  knows?  We  may 
fight  Russia  then;  today,  we  help  each  other.” 

Sun  Yat-sen  trusted  Russia  and  trusted  Borodin — that  is  enough 
for  most  of  the  Cantonese,  who  venerate  their  dead  leader  as  the 
Russians  venerate  Lenin.  “Chung  Shan’s”  picture — they  call  him 
“Middle  Mountain” — has  the  place  of  honor  in  every  hall  in  Canton ; 
one  would  not  be  surprised  to  see  lighted  candles  and  joss-sticks  burn- 
ing before  it.  Chiang  Kai-shek,  the  general  in  charge  of  the  Wham- 
poa army,  is  the  only  one  of  the  Canton  leaders  who  has  ever  been  to 
Moscow — and  the  foreigners,  with  that  curious  faith  in  military  men 
which  seems  universal  among  Western  exiles  in  the  East,  look  to  him 
as  a possible  counterbalance  to  the  Russians.  He  himself  boasts  not 
of  his  military  victories  but  of  his  long  devotion  to  Sun  Yat-sen.  The 
Chinese  will  not  speak  ill  of  the  Russians.  Wang  Ching-wei,  the  rosy- 
cheeked,  enthusiastic,  boyish  chief  of  the  Government,  has  a respect 
for  Borodin  which  is  the  more  striking  because  Borodin  has  to  talk 
to  Wang  through  an  interpreter.  T.  V.  Soong,  the  young  Harvard 
graduate  who  is  Minister  of  Finance  and  manager  of  the  government 
bank,  turns  naturally  to  him,  and  Borodin  calls  Soong  “a  man  in  a 
million.”  The  new  president  of  Kwangtung  University  is  planning  to 
send  two  hundred  and  fifty  Cantonese  boys  and  girls  (another  of  Can- 
ton’s futuristic  ideas  is  that  women  may  amount  to  something  too) 
to  Moscow  each  year;  he  thinks  a year  in  Russia  will  help  them  more 
than  his  own  years  at  Columbia  helped  him.  “Russia’s  problems  are 
more  like  China’s,”  he  says. 

Borodin  himself  does  not  think  highly  of  the  training  given 
Chinese  students  in  America.  “They  lose  touch  with  China,”  he  said. 
“Go  to  the  Commercial  Press  in  Shanghai — it  is  the  work  of  returned 
students.  Ask  for  a book  on  the  agrarian  situation  in  China.  They 
haven’t  got  it.  Ask  for  a book  on  labor  conditions.  None  exists.  But 
they  have  translations  of  lives  of  George  Washington  and  Abraham 
Lincoln  and  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Woodrow  Wilson.  That’s  what 
the  returned  students  do;  they  translate  America  into  Chinese.” 


27 


VII 


The  Canton  General 

The  first  and  most  extraordinary  thing  about  Chiang  Kai-shek, 
as  a Chinese  military  leader,  is  that  he  would  refuse  to  accept 
any  interpretation  of  his  successes  in  terms  of  his  own  character. 
He  represents  a party,  and  his  Kuomintang  soldiers,  trained  in  a 
school  of  politics  as  well  as  in  a military  academy,  are  like  nothing 
else  in  China.  When  I asked  him  what  he  thought  of  Feng  Yu-hsiang. 
the  Christian  general  whose  Northwestern  army  flirts  with  the  na- 
tionalists in  the  South,  he  answered:  “You  cannot  tell  anything  about 
an  army  by  looking  at  its  general.  You  must  look  into  it,  and  see  what 
kind  of  men  makes  up  the  ranks.”  I doubt  whether  such  an  answer 
would  have  occurred  to  any  other  of  China’s  thousand  generals. 

If  you  go  to  see  Chang  Tso-lin,  the  war  lord  of  Manchuria  and 
Peking,  he  will  receive  you  like  a king,  dressed  in  fine  robes,  in  a 
throne  room  hung  with  tiger  skins;  Wu  Pei-fu  affects  the  part  of  the 
genial  classical  scholar  (always  a sympathetic  role  in  China)  and  lives 
surrounded  by  friends  and  underlings.  Sun  Chuan-fong  used  to  re- 
ceive visitors  in  a magnificent  yamen  in  Nanking  with  bugles  blowing. 
Six  lines  of  soldiers  were  drawn  up  at  salute  to  greet  us  when,  with 
the  American  Consul,  I called  on  Sun,  and  all  was  pomp  and  ceremony. 
When  I went  to  see  Chiang  Kai-shek  in  Canton  I presented  my  card 
at  the  door  of  an  inconspicuous  two-story  modern  dwelling  house; 
the  boy  studied  it  and  silently  pointed  upstairs.  At  the  top  of  the 
stairs  I met  a pleasant-looking  young  man  in  an  officer’s  uniform 
without  distinguishing  marks  of  rank. 

“Where  Chiang  Kai-shek?”  I asked  in  simplified  English. 

“Yes,  Chiang  Kai-shek,”  the  young  man  replied. 

“Where,  where  Chiang  Kai-shek?”  I repeated,  puzzled. 

The  young  man  pointed  to  a bedroom;  I entered  and  sat  down. 
A moment  later  Chen  Tsu-yen,  a former  Lehigh  University  student, 
came  in  and  explained  that  the  pleasant  young  officer  was  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  himself.  The  bare  bedroom  was  his;  it  was  also  his 
workroom.  The  inevitable  tea  appeared,  also  a plate  of  hard  candies, 
and  another  of  exceedingly  stale  rice  cakes.  The  general  ate  nothing, 
and  instead  of  tea  he  sipped  hot  water.  Most  of  the  time  he  sat 
erect,  his  folded  hands  on  the  table  before  him.  There  was  no  bom- 
bast about  him,  hardly  any  gesture,  but  he  had  a quiet  dignity,  and — 
a quality  rare  in  Chinese,  rare  enough  anywhere — he  smiled  as  he 
spoke.  A tall,  slight  man  under  40,  there  was  nothing  in  his  appear- 
ance to  mark  him  as  a leader  of  men ; his  high  forehead,  which  seemed 
higher  because  of  his  close-cropped  head,  his  delicate  features,  and 
small-boned  hands  seemed  rather  to  indicate  the  scholar-type. 

I asked  him,  when  we  began  our  interview,  for  a short  autobiog- 


28 


raphy,  and  he  wrote  it  out  as  the  interpreter  translated  his  remarks 
into  English.  But  it  looked  vex'y  brief  in  Chinese  characters,  and  the 
interpreter  reduced  it  to  this  simple  chronicle:  “Born  in  Chekiang 
Province,  educated  at  Paotingfu  Military  Academy  and  in  Japan,  with 
Sun  Yat-sen  since  the  revolution.”  Later  I gleaned  a few  facts  to 
fill  the  chinks.  He  was  born  in  1888  in  a tiny  village  near  Feng-wha ; 
his  father  died  when  he  was  a baby,  and  his  mother  brought  him  up 
among  her  relatives,  who  were  Ningpo  tradesmen.  In  1906  he  won 
one  of  the  forty  Chekiang  scholarships  to  the  new  national  military 
academy,  where  the  decaying  Manchu  dynasty  was  trying,  too  late, 
to  build  a modern  Western-style  army.  A year  later  his  instructors 
sent  him  on  to  study  further  in  Japan.  Those  were  the  days,  just 
after  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  when  thousands  of  Chinese  crossed  the 
Yellow  Sea  to  study  in  Nippon;  they  still  counted  the  Mikado’s  people 
as  brothers,  of  their  own  race. 

The  revolution  of  1911  called  him  home,  with  others  of  China’s 
young  enthusiasts.  The  republic  gave  him  command  of  a brigade  of 
Shanghai  troops,  and  for  a time  he  drilled  them  conscientiously.  But 
he  lost  interest,  and  for  two  years  he  lived  the  life  of  a typical  old- 
style  Chinese  officer.  He  drank,  he  gamed,  he  frequented  sing-song 
houses;  sometimes  he  would  be  away  for  weeks.  Those  were  dis- 
illusioning days  for  ardent  young  men;  Yuan  Shih-kai  was  molding 
the  republic  into  something  very  like  a new  monarchy.  Leader  of 
vain  revolutionary  movements  for  decades.  Sun  Yat-sen,  Yuan’s  prede- 
cessor in  the  presidency,  raised  the  standard  of  revolt  in  1913;  Chiang 
joined  him,  and  ever  since  his  destinies  have  been  intimately  linked 
with  those  of  the  “father  of  the  republic.” 

For  ten  years  he  was  a minor  officer — his  only  outstanding 
achievement  being  a venture  in  speculative  exchange,  which,  according 
to  the  stories,  netted  him  a million  dollars,  all  of  which  he  turned 
over  to  Dr.  Sun.  Finally,  in  1923,  Dr.  Sun  appointed  him  head  of  the 
new  Whampoa  Military  Academy,  across  the  river  from  Canton. 

Out  of  Whampoa  has  grown  Canton’s  national  success.  With  the 
aid  of  General  Gallant  (one  of  Borodin’s  assistants)  and  a small  sub- 
sidy Chiang  trained  a corps  of  boys  to  be  officers  in  China’s  future 
nationalist  army.  He  insisted  upon  boys — no  one  over  25  need  apply. 
And  he  built  up  a corps  of  lads  ready  to  die  for  China  and  Sun  Yat- 
sen  and  Chiang  Kai-shek.  He  trained  them  to  shoot  straight  and  to 
goose-step.  And  he  also  drilled  them  in  the  “Three  People’s  Princi- 
ples” which  are  the  basis  of  v/hat,  since  the  leader’s  death,  has  become 
known  as  Sun  Yat-senism. 

The  Three  Principles  are  variously  translated.  The  Mayor  of 
Canton,  son  of  old  Wu  Ting-fang,  so  long  the  Chinese  Minister  to 
Washington,  says  they  mean  government  of,  by,  and  for  the  people. 
Others  define  them  as  nationalism,  democracy,  and  socialism.  But 


29 


China  is  a long,  long  way  from  democracy  or  socialism  today,  and  es- 
sentially they  are  understood  as  the  expression  of  the  democratic 
nationalist  movement  which  has  so  stirred  the  youth  of  China. 

Chiang  Kai-shek’s  name  first  floated  into  familiarity  in  the  treaty 
ports  of  the  North  last  year  when  he  routed  Chiung  Ching-ming,  who 
had  long  held  the  northern  half  of  Canton  Province,  and  forced  him 
to  flee  on  a warship.  While  in  the  North  he  discovered  a conspiracy 
in  his  capital.  His  little  force  abandoned  the  cities  they  had  just 
won,  turned  homeward,  and  routed  the  mercenaries  who  had  taken 
possession  of  Canton  in  their  absence,  then  retraced  their  steps  and 
in  another  brilliant  campaign  defeated  Chen  Chiung-ming  a second 
time,  storming  Waichow,  a walled  and  fortified  city  which  had  never 
been  captured  by  storm  since  the  T’ang  Dynasty,  a thousand  years 
before. 

Chiang’s  Dare-to-Die  Corps  dashed  single  file  through  a narrow 
opening  in  the  face  of  machine-gun  fire,  leaving  hundreds  behind  but 
capturing  the  town.  Military  science  in  China  is  a game  like  chess, 
and  the  players  usually  obey  the  rules;  Chiang  defied  the  rules,  out- 
raging his  adversaries  but  winning  the  day.  And  since  then  he  has 
amazed  his  enemies  by  his  successive  capture  of  Hankow,  Wuchang, 
Kiukiang,  and  Hangchow. 

Chiang  is  a moody,  tempestuous  soul.  He  has  proved  himself 
as  an  administrator,  but  his  nerves  fray.  Every  few  months  he  is 
likely  to  vanish  from  Whampoa,  and  rest  his  soul  in  some  Buddhist 
retreat  in  the  mountains.  But  for  six  months  after  storming  Wai- 
chow he  devoted  himself  to  building  up  an  officers’  corps  for  Can- 
ton’s armies.  There  were  relics  of  a dozen  mercenary  bands  in  the 
province,  nominally  loyal  to  the  Kuomintang  Party  Government  which 
Chiang  had  helped  instal,  but  really  loyal  only  to  the  leaders  who  paid 
them.  Chiang  filtered  his  Whampoa  cadets  into  these  armies,  and 
sent  civilian  missionaries  of  Sun  Yat-senism  to  preach  the  nationalist 
gospel.  Most  Chinese  troops,  when  captured,  turn  about  and  fight 
for  their  conquerors;  Chiang  refuses  to  incorporate  such  uncertain 
units  and  boasts  that  his  own  soldiers  are  so  thoroughly  indoctrinated 
that  if  any  of  them  are  captured  they  will,  instead  of  fighting  for  their 
adversaries,  set  about  converting  them. 

At  any  rate,  Chiang’s  Whampoa-trained  troops  have  walked 
through  every  army  with  which  they  have  come  in  contact,  and  have 
won  a reputation  as  men  who  are  not  afraid  of  fighting  against  odds. 
With  half  China  already  under  their  flag,  and  with  sympathetic  party 
units  hoping  for  their  advent  in  every  city  of  the  country,  they  and 
their  leaders  are  a force  to  be  reckoned  with. 

“What  do  the  Russians  actually  do  here?”  I asked  Chiang  Kai- 
shek. 


30 


He  smiled,  but  all  he  said  was,  “We  employ  some  of  them  to  help 
in  technical  training  of  various  kinds.” 

Later,  he  added:  “Ours  is  part  of  a world  revolution,  and  we  can 
use  people  from  any  nation  if  they  sympathize  with  and  are  ready  to 
serve  our  nation.  Eussia,  in  general,  has  treated  China  better  than 
the  other  nations.  She  has  given  up  extraterritoriality,  renounced 
territorial  ambitions,  and  canceled  her  unequal  treaties,  and  we  like 
the  Russians  who  have  been  here  at  Canton.” 

“What  do  you  look  forward  to?”  I asked  him.  “What  will  be  the 
outcome  of  this  Canton  movement?” 

“We  will  join  with  the  Kuomintang  members  in  other  provinces 
and  unite  China,”  he  answered  briskly. 

“That’s  a large  order,”  I said. 

“Yes,  but  we’ll  do  it,”  came  the  reply.  “We  may  not  need  to 
fight  much;  we  will  organize.  Perhaps  within  a year  we  shall  start 
our  Northern  expedition,  for  the  Kuomintang  is  strong  on  the  Yangtze 
River  and  we  have  many  calls  for  help.” 

It  seemed  an  impossibly  rosy  picture  then,  but  Chiang  has 
accomplished  more  than  he  predicted. 

“What  then?”  I said. 

“We  will  cancel  the  unequal  treaties  and  set  China  free.” 

I raised  my  eyebrows. 

“It  will  not  be  difficult,”  he  went  on.  “In  one,  two,  at  most  three, 
years  it  will  be  done.” 

“What  do  you  mean  by  the  ‘unequal  treaties’?”  I persisted.  “Do 
you  expect  to  recover  rule  of  Shanghai  and  get  Hongkong  back  from 
Great  Britain?” 

He  waved  me  aside.  “Those  are  political  questions;  they  will 
settle  themselves  when  China  is  unified.  Unity  is  our  first  job.  Ex- 
traterritoriality and  customs  control  will,  of  course,  go  before  we 
recover  Hongkong.” 

And  then  he  began  to  catechize  me  keenly  about  America’s  atti- 
ture  toward  China  and  Japan.  “Your  statesmen  talk  in  a more  friendly 
way,”  he  said,  “but  in  the  end  they  sign  the  same  treaties  as  the 
British  and  the  Japanese,  and  we  like  an  attitude  of  straightforward 
opposition  better.” 


31 


VIII 


Bolshevism  i 

KARAKHAN  worked  from  Peking  in  the  North  of  China;  Borodin 
in  Canton  in  the  South.  Karakhan  was  the  Soviet  Ambassador 
to  the  Chinese  Republic;  Borodin  is  adviser  to  the  Canton  Govern- 
ment, holding  his  appointment  from  the  national  congress  of  the 
Kuomintang  Party  which  dominates  Canton;  but  both  were  Russian 
agents,  paid  from  Moscow,  and  able,  energetic  men. 

Karakhan  is  an  Armenian,  born  in  Tiflis,  Georgia,  in  1889;  a 
revolutionary  in  his  school-days,  he  was  forced  to  flee  to  Siberia;  in 
Harbin  he  served  a prison  term  in  1910,  in  Vladivostok  in  1912,  in 
Petrograd  in  1915  (for  opposition  to  the  war)  ; but  he  was  never  out- 
side the  borders  of  Russia  until  he  was  named  Minister  to  Poland 
in  1921.  He  reached  Peking  in  September,  1923;  in  nine  months  he 
had  negotiated  a treaty  with  China  which  made  Russia  the  most 
popular  foreign  nation  among  the  younger  generation  and  himself  the 
official  dean  of  the  Diplomatic  Corps,  and  in  general  had  created  more 
stir  than  most  diplomats  do  in  a lifetime.  He  is  a born  actor,  re- 
sponsive to  his  audience,  with  quick,  mobile  gestures  of  his  almost 
feminine  hands.  His  lips  are  full;  his  nose  somewhat  hooked;  his  eyes 
gleam  behind  thick  octagonal  eyeglasses;  his  hair  is  already  slightly 
grayed,  but  his  pointed  beard,  shaved  to  a sharp  line  on  the  cheeks, 
is  thick  and  brown.  Foreigners  call  him  the  fountainhead  of  trouble 
in  China,  with  thousands  of  paid  agents  among  the  students  and 
workers. 

“Propaganda?”  he  said  to  me  one  day.  “Of  course  I do  propa- 
ganda. But  I don’t  have  to  pay  for  it.  Why  should  I pay  students 
and  professors  to  say  what  they  want  to  say  anyway?  Paid  propa- 
gandists are  never  any  good;  how  can  a man  stir  others  unless  he  has 
the  fire  of  sincerity  in  his  own  breast?  I spoke  last  week  at  one  of 
the  universities,  and  my  speech  was  all  propaganda — and  so  was  your 
Silas  Strawn’s  when  he  spoke  at  Tsinghua;  last  summer,  when  stu- 
dent delegations  flooded  Peking,  I received  them  all,  fed  them  just 
such  tea  and  cakes  as  I am  offering  you,  and  talked  to  them.  That  was 
* propaganda.”  He  chuckled.  “It  was  good  propaganda  too,  especially 

when  those  same  students  went  to  your  American  Legation  and  were 
received  by  a third  assistant  under  secretary  who  was  obviously  in  a 
hurrj’^  to  get  away  from  them  so  that  he  could  play  golf.  It  was 
propaganda  last  week  when  we  lowered  our  Embassy  flag  to  half-mast 
on  the  anniversary  of  Sun  Yat-sen’s  death,  while  no  other  legation 
remembered  to  honor  the  first  President  of  China.  They  are  fools, 
fools!  They  miss  their  chances — and  then  they  think  I have  to  pay 
for  my  propaganda!” 


32 


What  Russia  wants  in  China,  Karakhan  said,  is  “a  strong,  inde- 
pendent China.”  “We  are  the  only  Power  that  really  supports  the 
nationalist  movement,”  he  insisted.  “The  others  say  they  want  a 
strong  government,  but  they  refuse  to  abandon  their  unequal-treaty 
privileges  until  China  is  strong — and  of  course  she  never  will  be  strong 
until  she  has  thrown  overboard  those  treaties.  We  have  proved  our 
sincerity  by  our  actions;  we  have  renounced  the  unequal  treaties. 
It’s  not  idealism;  it’s  just  sense.  A strong,  independent  China  will 
naturally  be  our  friend.  Inevitably  she  will  be  against  imperialism, 
which  is  everywhere  our  enemy.  She  will  need  foreign  capital — she 
cannot  develop  without  it — but,  like  Russia,  she  will  not  want  to 


China  hears  the  burdens  of  the  world — a poster  from 
a Peking  wall 

grant  special  privileges  and  control  to  the  financial  powers  that  lend 
her  money.  And  in  that  fight  Russia  is  her  only  possible  friend. 
The  facts  fight  with  us;  China’s  struggle  for  emancipation  brings 
her  every  day  closer  to  us.  No  wonder  they  are  afraid  of  us;  the 
vision  of  a strong  China  close  to  a strong  Russia  is  enough  to  make 
the  colonizing  Powers  shudder.  That’s  why  they  stick  to  their 
treaties.” 

(As  I look  back  over  my  notebooks  I find  an  interview  with  an 
American  official  on  the  same  day  that  I talked  with  Karakhan.  These 
phrases  rise  to  punctuate  Karakhan’s  argument:  “The  nationalist 
wants  to  deal  with  theories ; we  have  to  deal  with  facts,  and  the  treaties 
exist.”  “We  don’t  want  to  wipe  out  Japanese  interests  by  a too  high 
customs  tariff  in  China.”  “The  Powers  don’t  want  free  money  to 
come  into  the  hands  of  the  present  Peking  Government;  they  don’t 


33 


trust  it.”  “Sentiment  is  no  use.  You  can’t  honestly  argne  that  the 
Chinese  have  any  deserts — they  have  been  so  absolutely  immoral  in 
their  domestic  and  international  relations.”) 

Karakhan  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  sovietizing  China.  “China  is 
in  a very  hopeful  stage,”  he  told  me.  “You  may  read  of  civil  war  In 
the  newspapers,  but  colossal  historic  forces  are  at  work  beneath  the 
surface.  And  if  you  want  to  know  what  the  result  will  be,  look  at 
Canton.” 

I had  looked  at  Canton,  and  seen  there  the  things  which  cause 
the  Constitutional  Defense  League  to  describe  it  as  “a  full-fledged 
soviet  government.”  In  Canton,  for  more  than  a year  a Strike  Com- 
mittee had  maintained  a boycott  of  British  goods;  the  century-old 
foreign  hospital  had  been  closed  because  its  employees  were  not  union- 
ized; the  foreigners  lived  on  sufferance,  and  the  students  in  the  mis- 
sionary schools  were  currently  described  as  “running-dogs  of  imperial- 
ism.” I had  seen  union  headquarters  decorated  with  pictures  of  Lenin 
and  Trotzky;  walls  pasted  with  lurid  anti-foreign  posters  of  obvious 
Russian  inspiration;  Russian  officers  drilling  Chinese  cadets,  Russian 
advisers  serving  in  half  a dozen  government  departments.  I knew 
that  Russia  had  lent  money  to  the  Cantonese  to  help  them  build  their 
army  and  establish  their  nationalist  government,  and  I had  talked 
with  Borodin,  the  tall,  dark,  slow-spoken  Russian  who  in  three  years 
had  won  for  himself  a position  of  curious  authority  with  the  Chinese, 
and  with  the  leading  “Communists”  of  Canton. 

Tam  Ping-san,  for  instance,  who  has  since  made  his  pilgrimage 
to  Moscow.  Tam  is  a likable  revolutionist  who  reminds  one  of  Hippo- 
lyte  Havel,  the  amiable  anarchist  who  used  to  have  the  reputation  of 
being  the  best  cook  in  Greenwich  Village.  “Communism  is  a long 
way  off,”  Tam  said,  “because  China  is  economically  so  backward. 
But  the  road  to  communism  lies  through  China’s  national  emanicipa- 
tion.  Our  Nationalist  movement  is  to  us  what  the  labor  movement  is 
to  the  West — ^and  it  is  the  working  class  in  the  most  developed  parts 
of  China  which  leads  the  nationalist  movement  here.  For  the  present 
we  have  to  cooperate  with  the  petty  bourgeoisie  and  the  militarists. 
But  it  will  be  a long  fight,  and  in  its  course  class  lines  will  develop. 
How  the  class  struggle  will  work  out  we  cannot  yet  tell.” 

Indeed  they  cannot.  I talked  long  with  many  so-called  Com- 
munists— both  older  men  and  passionate  young  students  who  make 
Sun  Yat-sen  and  Lenin  their  twin  gods,  and  spend  their  vacations 
(often  their  study  months  too)  touring  the  country  to  rouse  the  vil- 
lages against  the  imperialists — and  they  never  seemed  more  than  very 
intense  and  earnest  nationalists.  Of  the  struggle  against  foreign 
capitalists  they  could  and  would  talk  in  fierce  terms;  but  of  class  strug- 
gle among  Chinese  they  had  small  conception.  I talked  too  with  lead- 
ers, both  Chinese  and  foreign,  in  the  well-financed  anti-Russian  move- 


34 


ments  which  center  about  the  British-owned  North  China  Daily  News 
of  Shanghai,  and  I was  never  able  to  understand  the  basis  for  either 
fear  or  hope  of  communism  in  China. 

Two  factors,  absent  in  China,  made  the  Bolshevik  revolution  in 
Russia  possible.  One  was  the  network  of  railroads  centering  in  Mos- 
cow. The  coast  regions,  accessible  to  the  anti-communist  foreign 
Powers,  dropped  away ; but  Moscow,  the  railroad  center,  controlled  the 
continental  mass  of  Russia.  China  has  no  railroad  centers;  its  great 
cities  are  all  on  the  coasts,  accessible  to  Western  gunboats,  and  inde- 
pendent of  each  other.  Canton,  Shanghai,  Hankow,  Peking,  Mukden — 
each  can  have  its  own  government.  With  Western  Powers  in  full  con- 
trol of  Hongkong,  Shanghai,  and  Dairen,  established  in  Tientsin  and 
Hankow,  patrolling  the  Yangtze,  and  administering  one  quarter  of 
Peking,  China’s  unification  is  more  difficult  than  Russia’s. 

Furthermore,  China  has  no  class-conscious  farmers.  Its  rice-and- 
cabbage  peasantry  live  close  to  the  starvation  line  (the  average  farm 
in  some  regions  is  under  one  acre),  and  doubtless  would  gladly  revolt 
if  they  saw  anything  to  revolt  against.  The  Russian  peasant  worked 
in  sight  of  a landlord  who  obviously  lived  in  relative  luxury;  and 
when  the  Bolsheviks,  alone  among  the  Russian  parties,  said  “Take  the 
land’’  they  won  the  peasants,  for  the  crucial  moment,  to  their  support. 
But  the  wealthy  Chinese  live  in  the  cities,  often  under  foreign  pro- 
tection in  the  foreign  concessions;  except,  perhaps,  in  Anhwei,  China 
has  few  great  landed  estates.  Wealth  is  concealed.  In  the  Canton  and 
Yangtze  deltas,  to  be  sure,  where  the  soil  is  rich  and  the  market  cities 
close,  land  rentals  are  oppressively  high,  and  wherever  water  must  be 
artificially  supplied  for  irrigation — which  requires  capital — absentee 
landlordism,  with  its  attendant  evils,  enters,  and  peasant  class-con- 
sciousness begins.  Some  of  the  orthodox  Moscow  economists,  who  are 
professional  prophets  of  communism,  build  vast  hopes  upon  this  peas- 
ant proletariat;  but  despite  the  success  of  the  Canton  Government  in 
organizing  peasant  unions  to  support  it  in  that  province  and  the  spon- 
taneous appearance  of  peasant  self-defense  organizations  in  soldier- 
ridden  Honan  and  Shensi,  I saw  scant  reason  to  believe  in  their  per- 
manence. Peasants  and  farmers  are  the  hardest  class  in  the  world 
to  organize — largely  because  their  class  enemy  is  not  visible.  The 
great  mass  of  China  lives  on  as  it  has  lived  for  untold  centuries,  un- 
touched and  unaware  of  the  industrial  contacts  which  are  revolution- 
izing the  self-conscious  port  cities.  China’s  revolutions — dynastic, 
nationalist,  or  economic — ^will  receive  little  either  of  effective  aid  or 
opposition  from  the  peasant  masses. 

Russia’s  real  contribution  to  the  Chinese  revolution  is  a method 
of  party  organization.  The  Canton  Government,  like  the  Moscow  Gov- 
ernment, is  ruled  by  the  “Political  Bureau” — a sort  of  executive  com- 
mittee— of  a political  party,  which  in  Canton  is  Sun  Yat-sen’s  old  Kuo- 


35 


mintang,  rejuvenated  under  Russian  expert  guidance.  This  party  now 
has  nearly  half  a million  members  in  all  China;  it  governs  Canton, 
and  has  a certain  influence  in  Feng  Yu-hsiang’s,  the  “Christian  gen- 
eral’s,” territory.  Where  it  holds  power  it  rules  as  a party  dictator- 
ship— and  this  comes  as  near  as  anything  in  China  today  to  political 
democracy.  The  attempt  to  establish  a republic  on  the  American  model 
has  been  a total  failure;  nothing  is  left  of  it;  it  had  no  roots  in  the 
soil,  and  it  washed  out.  Its  last  appearance  was  in  the  Parliament 
which  Tsao  Kun  bribed  to  elect  him  President  in  1923.  All  China,  with 
the  partial  exception  of  Canton,  is  ruled  by  military  dictators,  and 
even  in  Canton  General  Chiang  Kai-shek  seems  to  be  growing  in  in- 
fluence. The  Russians,  with  their  technique  of  party  dictatorship, 
have  provided  China  with  a method  by  which  it  may  in  time  grow 
beyond  personal  dictatorships. 

Karakhan  and  Borodin  would,  I believe,  deplore  anything  like  an 
attempt  at  Communist  rule  in  China  today,  because  they  want  a strong, 
friendly  neighbor,  and  realize  that  chaos  in  China  provides  opportunity 
for  their  enemies.  They  are  not  averse  to  stirring  up  trouble  in 
regions  where  European — or  Japanese — control  is  strong.  The  fan- 
tastic stories  of  thousands  of  Russian  agents  circulating  about  China 
are  unquestionably  fairy  tales,  but  every  Chinese  radical  who  wants  it 
can  have  sympathy  and  encouragement  at  the  nearest  Russian  con- 
sulate. Radical  leaders  in  Peking  seek  the  protection  of  the  Russian 
Embassy  when  the  political  climate  becomes  unhealthy  for  them. 
Borodin  lectures  to  large  audiences  on  the  lessons  and  methods  of 
the  Russian  revolution;  and  both  Canton  and  the  “Christian  gen- 
eral” have  had  Russian  aid  in  their  military  operations.  But  since 
traveling  by  automobile  the  1,100  miles  across  the  desert,  mountains, 
and  bridgeless  rivers  which  separate  Feng  Yu-hsiang’s  railroad  base 
from  the  Trans-Siberian  Railway  I have  lost  faith  in  the  stories  of 
immense  Russian  munition  supplies  being  shipped  across  Mongolia. 

Russia  has  abandoned  her  concessions  in  Hankow  and  Tientsin; 
she  is  ready  for  customs  autonomy;  and  as  long  as  Russia  and  China 
are  capital-importing  countries,  they  will  continue  to  have  a real  com- 
munity of  interest  in  defending  themselves  against  the  efforts  of  the 
capital-exporting  countries  to  control  them.  While  the  Western  Pow- 
ers stumble  along  in  their  present  stupid  unconceding  fashion  the 
Russians  can  make  hay.  Karl  Radek,  rector  of  the  Sun  Yat-sen  Uni- 
versity, which  is  giving  400  Chinese  boys  and  girls  a Moscow  educa- 
tion, said  to  me:  “You  Americans  still  have  an  opportunity  to  keep  the 
Chinese  revolution  in  bourgeois  channels.  You  are  not  tied,  like  Eng- 
land, to  a burdensome  past;  and  you  have  capital  to  invest.  If  you 
put  yourselves  on  the  side  of  the  national  renaissance  you  can  keep 
the  Chinese  revolution  bourgeois  for  twenty  years  at  least — perhaps 
more.  But  I doubt  if  you  will  have  the  sense  to  do  it.” 


36 


IX 


America  in  China 

SOME  Amei'icans  think  of  our  role  in  China  as  that  of  a guardian 
angel,  pointing  the  way  to  true  democracy  and  assisting  China 
to  struggle  along  it  despite  her  wicked  enemies.  The  Chinese  do  not 
see  things  that  way.  They  have  had  a little  sentimentality  about 
America,  but  they  are  beginning  to  think  of  us  as  just  one  of  the  rest. 

We  kept  the  “open  door”  in  China  twenty  years  ago — but  the  open 
door  is  not  so  beatific  a vision  to  Chinese  as  to  us.  America  wanted 
it  because  it  prevented  other  nations  from  staking  out  reserved  areas 
into  which  our  trade  would  not  be  able  to  grow.  We  were  for  it  be- 
cause it  was  in  the  interest  of  our  commerce.  It  helped  China  at  that 
time,  but  it  is  associated  in  Chinese  minds  with  the  indefensible  treat- 
ies, to  which  we  are  a party,  which  keep  her  from  shutting  the  door, 
even  partially,  in  the  face  of  all  parties.  She  would  like  to  raise  her 
customs  duties,  as  the  United  States  and  other  nations  have  done,  and 
■protect  her  home  markets,  as  we  do;  and  we,  among  others,  have 
not  got  around  to  giving  our  consent. 

We  “remitted”  part  of  the  Boxer  Indemnity  in  1908  and  more  in 
1924.  It  was  a good  piece  of  diplomacy.  The  money  has  been  care- 
fully spent  under  American  auspices  in  giving  Chinese  students  an 
American  type  of  education,  and  the  American-educated  “returned  stu- 
dents” have  vastly  increased  American  influence  in  China.  But  the 
cynical  young  Chinese  patriots  of  today  say  that  the  indemnity  was 
an  outrage  in  the  first  place  and  that  if  it  was  to  be  remitted  it  should 
have  been  returned  to  the  Chinese  Government  without  condition,  to 
be  spent  exclusively  at  its  direction. 

We  have  given  largely  to  missionary  enterprise — ^which,  again, 
the  young  Chinese  regard  as  an  effort  to  de-Chinafy  China. 

And  we  maintain  a “Legation  Guard”  of  450  men  in  Peking, 
another  guard  of  1,000  men  along  the  Tientsin-Shanhaikwan  Railway, 
a fleet  of  river  patrols  which  run  a thousand  miles  up  the  Yangtze 
and  six  hundred  miles  into  Canton  and  Kwangsi  provinces;  we  share 
through  our  consul  in  the  administration  of  the  foreign  city  of  Shang- 
hai, the  chairman  of  whose  Municipal  Council  is  an  American  lawyer 
from  the  State  of  Maine;  our  consulates  in  Tientsin,  Shanghai,  and 
Canton  are  in  foreign-ruled  quarters,  under  the  protection  of  foreign 
flags;  we  cling  to  extraterritoriality  (or  “extrality”),  which  gives 
Americans  in  China  rights  which  Chinese  do  not  have;  and  we  are 
allied  with  the  Powers  in  maintaining  foreign  control  of  China’s 
customs. 

At  the  Washington  Conference,  in  1921,  the  world  was  assured, 
great  things  were  done  for  China.  A careful  reading  of  the  treaties 
and  resolutions  shows  rather  that  they  were,  so  to  speak,  adumbrated. 


37 


A foreign  commission  was  planned  to  “inquire”  into  the  state  of  jus- 
tice in  China,  “with  a view  to  reporting”  conditions  to  the  foreign 
governments  and  suggesting  to  China  legislation  and  reforms  which 
might  eventually  warrant  the  Powers  in  taking  steps  toward  relin- 
quishing extrality.  Which  really  did  not  mean  much.  A customs  con- 
ference was  to  discuss — not  customs  autonomy  but  a 2V2  per  cent 
increase  in  the  customs  rates.  At  Washington  also  Japan  promised 
to  return  Shantung  and  Britain  to  return  Wei-hai-wei,  and  it  should 
be  noted  to  the  honor  of  the  Japanese  that  theirs  was  the  only  pledge 
which  has  been  fulfilled.  The  British  refused  to  give  up  Wei-hai-wei 
unless  allowed  special  privileges  on  the  golf  courses  they  had  built 
there ! The  customs  treaty  was  not  even  ratified  until,  .three  and  a 
half  years  after  its  signature,  the  outbreak  of  nationalism  in  China 
stirred  the  Powers  into  a semblance  of  action;  and  the  customs  con- 
ference broke  up  as  soon  as  the  nationalist  movement  seemed  to  sink 
out  of  sight  behind  the  civil  war. 

Customs  and  extrality  conferences  dragged  through  the  weary 
winter  of  1925-1926  in  Peking.  The  American  delegates  were  pledged 
to  the  principle  of  cooperation  with  the  other  Powers;  the  official 
theory  was  that  America  was  ready  to  give  almost  anything  to  China 
if  the  other  Powers  would  agree;  but  that  independent  action  by  the 
American  Government  would  somehow  be  most  unfortunate — a theory 
which  condemned  us  to  sterility.  The  extrality  commission  met 
solemnly,  studied  the  new  Chinese  law  codes  (which  may  be  applied 
occasionally  in  modern  courts)  and  found  them  excellent;  visited  a 
few  recently  whitewashed  prisons,  and  enjoyed  the  pleasant  cosmo- 
politan social  life  of  the  Legation  Quarter.  It  intended  to  tour  China 
in  the  springtime.  Unfortunately  civil  war  cut  it  off  from  Shansi, 
and  Canton’s  proud  Government  told  it  to  stay  away.  So  it  left 
extrality  where  it  found  it — which  is  what  it  was  intended  to  do. 

At  the  customs  conference  the  Powers  rather  ludicrously  revealed 
the  nature  of  their  interest  in  China.  The  conference  began  with  an 
ambiguously  worded  declaration  in  favor  of  tariff  autonomy  three 
years  later — a declaration  which,  however,  requires  confirmation  in  a 
treaty  which  was  not  drawn  up,  much  less  ratified.  The  Powers  next 
discussed  immediate  steps  to  increase  the  Chinese  customs  receipts. 
A program  was  worked  out  to  increase  the  duties  sufficiently  to  de- 
velop $90,000,000  of  new  revenues ; but  when  the  proposed  increase  was 
analyzed  the  surprised  Chinese  discovered  that  it  meant  nothing  to 
them.  Thirty-seven  millions  were  to  go  to  the  provinces  to  compen- 
sate for  likin  and  assure  its  abolition;  30  millions  were  to  be  applied 
to  pay  interest  on  the  consolidated  debt — in  part  on  the  infamous 
Nishihara  loans  which  Japan  forced  on  China  in  1918;  10  millions  were 
to  pay  interest  on  the  Hukuang  and  Tsinpu  railway  bonds,  already  in 
default  (it  will  be  recalled  that  Morgan  interests  bought  up  the  Ger- 


38 


man  rights  in  the  Hukuang  railway) ; and  while  the  remaining  13 
millions  were  at  first  destined  for  a Chinese  government,  the  Powers 
felt  doubtful  of  the  wisdom  of  giving  it  to  any  government  in  China’s 
state  of  chaos  and  decided  it  might  be  wiser  to  convert  it  into  a 
contingent  fund,  to  pay  interest  on  the  other  railway  bonds  which 
were  sure  soon  to  go  into  default!  The  conference  finally  adjourned, 
however,  without  taking  even  this  action,  leaving  China  stuck  with 
her  old  ridiculously  low  customs  rate.  The  Powers  had  exposed  their 
self-interest.  The  British  and  Americans,  desiring  to  open  large-scale 
trade  with  the  interior,  were  most  concerned  with  the  abolition  of 
likin,  and  also  with  provision  for  interest  payments  on  the  railway 
bonds  in  which  their  nationals  had  invested;  the  Japanese  wanted 
interest  paid  on  the  government  debts,  but  without  raising  the  cus- 
tom duties,  which  would  interfere  with  the  market  for  their  cheap 
goods  in  China;  the  Italians,  Dutch,  and  Belgians,  having  no  trade, 
but  heavy  investments,  were  willing  to  have  the  customs  raised  to  the 
sky  limit  if  only  interest  was  provided  for  their  railway  bonds.  Since 
then  the  Powers  have  let  the  local  militarists  assess  for  their  own 
benefit  a small  surtax  on  the  customs,  but  no  one  of  them  has  taken 
forthright  action. 

The  amiable  policy  of  giving  an  air  of  intense  activity  whenever 
the  Chinese  wax  turbulent,  and  of  oifering  to  do  something  on  con- 
dition that  the  Chinese  do  something  else  first,  is  wearing  out.  The 
Chinese  do  not  accept  the  quid-pro-quo  theory;  they  want  to  be  free, 
even  to  misgovern  themselves,  and  the  nationalistic  philosophy  of  the 
West  is  sweeping  like  a whirlwind  across  their  continent-nation.  No 
government,  however  strong  its  military  or  foreign  financial  support, 
can  stand  long  against  it. 

China  will  not  have  Western  standards  of  justice  for  many  years 
— but  more  and  more  she  will  develop  a conscious  sense  that  it  is  un- 
fair for  foreigners  to  have  more  privileges  than  Chinese  in  China. 
Already  extrality  is  fading  out  in  the  provinces;  only  within  range 
of  foreign  warships  is  it  in  force.  Foreigners  increasingly  have  to 
take  their  chances — like  the  Chinese.  “If  you  don’t  like  this  country 
as  it  is,  you  can  go  back  where  you  came  from’’ — that  100  per  cent 
American  slogan  is  being  naturalized  in  Asia. 

Today  the  customs  rates  are  determined  by  foreigners,  collected 
by  foreigners,  and  used  by  foreigners  to  pay  interest  on  bad  foreign 
investments.  No  wide-awake  people  would  tolerate  it,  and  anti-foreign 
demonstrations  in  a thousand  cities  prove  that  the  Chinese  people, 
led  by  the  boy  and  girl  students,  is  at  last  awake.  From  the  idealistic 
younger  generation  the  new  national  gospel  has  spread  to  a shrewd 
older  generation.  Already  the  salt  revenues,  once  used  to  pay  the  for- 
eign interest,  have  been  seized  by  local  militarists  (even  at  Tientsin, 
under  the  noses  of  the  foreign  garrisons),  and  the  customs  may  soon 


39 


go  the  same  way.  The  process  will  discourage  foreign  investors;  but 
in  the  long  run  the  Chinese  may  gain.  They  will  be  better  off  if  the 
process  of  industrialization,  already  fiercely  rapid,  can  be  retarded. 
The  transformation  which  China  is  undergoing  is  so  fundamental, 
so  destructive  of  her  old  settled  civilization,  that  at  best  it  will  re- 
quire years  of  civil  war,  apparent  chaos,  bankruptcy,  and  default. 
One  of  the  great  transformations  of  history  is  occurring  in  our  day, 
making  our  American  conquest  of  a continent  seem  slow  and  palsied; 
and  the  process  is  rapid  enough  without  the  stimulation  of  greedy 
foreign  capital. 

For  America  in  China  the  choice  today  is  between  sympathy  and 
opposition  to  that  great  revolution.  Such  a choice  seems  to  involve 
alliance  with  Russia  or  alliance  with  Britain,  and  most  Americans  in- 
stinctively choose  Britain.  The  phobia  of  bolshevism  prevents  a clear 
vision  of  the  momentous  issue.  China,  a people  of  four  hundred  mil- 
lions, is  awakening.  Shall  we  align  ourselves  with  the  Powers  which 
are  trying  to  keep  her  bound  by  the  shackles  of  her  nineteenth-century 
weakness?  Or  shall  we  join  Russia,  the  one  Power  which  openly  en- 
courages the  effort  of  Chinese  youth  to  restore  their  nation’s  dignity? 
It  is  with  the  earnest  desire  that  America  should  be  regarded  as  the 
friend  of  Asia,  not  as  another  enemy,  that  I would  urge  the  United 
States  to  announce  now: 

1.  Intention  to  withdraw  our  consulates  in  China  from  the 
protection  of  foreign  flags,  and  to  retire  from  participation  in 
the  administration  of  foreign  settlements,  concessions,  or  quarters. 

2.  Renunciation  of  extraterritoriality. 

3.  Withdrawal  of  all  United  States  troops  from  Chinese  soil 
and  of  United  States  warships  from  Chinese  waters.  This  would 
mean  abandonment  of  the  six  river  ships  which  we  are  now 
building  in  China  for  the  Yangtze  River  patrol. 

4.  Abrogation,  in  so  far  as  the  United  States  is  concerned, 
of  the  anachronistic  clauses  of  the  Boxer  protocol  which  give  the 
Powers  special  rights  in  the  Tientsin-Peking  area. 

5.  Recognition  by  the  United  States  that  China  has  the  right 
to  fix  her  own  customs  rates  without  interference  by  foreign 
Powers. 

All  the  white  nations  in  the  East  are  drifting — and  drift  is  dan- 
gerous. If  they  continue  to  drift  they  may  wake  up  some  day  to  dis- 
cover that  their  own  nationalistic,  imperialistic,  militaristic  philosophy, 
absorbed  by  the  East,  is  at  last  creating  a real  Yellow  Peril. 


40 


X 


From  The  Nation  s Editorial  Diary 

September  22.  British  gunboats  have  got  into  trouble  on  the 
Yangtze  at  Wanhsien,  twelve  hundred  miles  from  the  sea.  A 
British  steamer  nosed  its  way  into  the  midst  of  a local  war,  capsizing 
a sampan  loaded  with  Chinese  troops.  A dozen  Chinese,  apparently, 
were  killed,  and  the  Chinese  held  the  British  responsible.  They  seized 
two  British  merchant  ships  and  took  six  British  officers  prisoner. 
Thereupon  three  British  warships  went  into  action,  rescuing  five  of 
the  six  officers  but  leaving  the  ships  in  Chinese  hands.  Seven  men 
wearing  His  Majesty’s  uniform  lost  their  lives  in  the  process.  They 
were  brave;  perhaps  they  were  heroic. 

But  this  heroism  loses  its  glamor  when  seen  through  Chinese  eyes. 
What  business  had  British  warships  a thousand  miles  in  the  interior 
of  China?  The  British  gunboats  concluded  the  “heroic”  episode  by 
bombarding  the  defenseless  city  of  Wanhsien — “effectively,”  the  cables 
say,  estimating  that  as  a result  there  are  five  thousand  fewer  men  and 
women  and  children  to  munch  rice  in  that  miserable  city.  And  now  the 
cables  burn  with  stories  of  protest  meetings  called  by  the  foreigners 
in  Shanghai  and  Hankow,  demanding  “strong”  action!  The  British 
Government  has  ordered  the  flagship  of  its  Asiatic  squadron,  with  a 
prince  of  the  royal  blood  aboard,  to  Hankow,  600  miles  from  the  sea; 
and  the  United  States  has  concentrated  five  warships  at  that  same 
far-off  city,  with  a dangerous  if  traditional  sense  of  the  necessity  for 
solidarity  among  the  foreigners.  Fortunately,  the  British  cannot  quite 
decide  against  whom  to  vent  their  wrath.  There  is  just  one  way  to 
keep  the  foreign  Powers  from  inextricably  involving  themselves  in 
China’s  civil  wars;  and  that  is  for  their  intrusive  sloops  and  gun- 
boats and  auxiliary  merchantmen  to  head  full-steam  for  the  open  sea. 

October  6.  Viscount  Cecil  was  about  to  deliver  a glowing  tribute 
to  the  new  spirit  of  peace  which  had  cast  such  a radiant  glow  over 
the  September  sessions  of  the  League  Assembly  when  the  Chinese  dele- 
gate arose.  He  asked  permission  to  speak  four  minutes,  obtained  it, 
began  with  the  smiling  announcement  that  the  Chinese  Government 
intended  to  present  the  League  with  a Chinese  encyclopedia,  and  then, 
while  the  delegates  were  still  beaming  with  appreciation,  proceeded 
to  inform  the  League  of  the  kind  of  peace  waged  by  Viscount  Cecil’s 
Government  on  the  Yangtze  River  in  the  heart  of  China. 

The  Chinese  delegate  sat  down.  Viscount  Cecil  arose.  “In  heated 
terms”  he  denounced  “this  strange  course  of  procedure.”  The  Chi- 
nese delegate,  it  seems,  should  have  informed  the  British  of  his  inten- 
tions beforehand.  Chu’s  course  was  “undiplomatic.”  Scant  attention 
was  paid  by  Viscount  Cecil  or  by  the  assembled  delegates  to  the  ques- 


41 


tions,  What  had  been  done  on  the  Yangtze,  what  could  be  done  to  pre- 
vent further  slaughter,  whether  the  prevailing  state  of  “peace”  in  the 
Far  East  was  in  fact  menaced.  The  Geneva  state  of  mind  was  prob- 
ably accurately  described  by  the  serious  correspondent  of  the  New 
York  Times  who  reported  that 

There  is  no  question  in  the  mind  of  anybody  that  the  Chinese 
have  the  right  to  present  to  the  League  any  situation  which  they 
consider  dangerous  to  peace.  But  it  is  considered  bad  judgment  on 
their  part  to  break  the  rules  of  the  Assembly  and  beg  four  minutes’ 
time  on  the  agenda  immediately  before  the  British  delegate’s  reading 
of  a carefully  prepared  statement  on  disarmament  and  make  a dis- 
course on  a matter  which  they  do  not  intend  to  follow  up.  The  prestige 
of  Chu  is  held  to  be  irreparably  ruined. 

And  there  you  have  the  vice  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind  in  a nutshell. 
It  does  not  matter  what  one  says  or  does,  but  one  must  do  it.  in  the 
best  form  and  according  to  the  international  book  of  etiquette. 

Hankow  has  just  been  taken  by  Chiang  Kai-shek,  generalissimo  of 
the  forces  of  the  Nationalist  Government  of  Canton,  and  his  Southern 
army  is  winning  new  victories  in  every  direction.  Part  of  its  suc- 
cess is  no  doubt  attributable  to  its  superior  military  training;  most 
of  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  is  the  one  army  in  China  which  is  loyal 
not  to  an  individual  but  to  a cause.  The  Canton  Government  has  for 
a year  and  a quarter  maintained  a boycott  of  British  goods  in  the 
rich  markets  of  South  China  and  has  sapped  the  strength  of  the 
British  merchant  fortress  of  Hongkong:  it  sweeps  northward  because 
it  has  expressed  the  new  national  pride  and  the  Chinese  people  recog- 
nize in  it  a loyalty  to  China  which  they  cannot  find  in  the  armies 
subsidized  by  Britain  and  by  Japan. 

October  20.  Canton  ceased  turning  over  the  salt  taxes  of  that 
province  for  the  service  of  the  foreign  debt,  to  which  they  are  pledged, 
away  back  in  1918.  Local  chieftains  have  occasionally  done  as  much, 
and  the  warlord  of  Tientsin,  favorite  of  the  foreigners  though  he  was, 
followed  suit  a few  months  ago.  And  now  even  Sun  Chuan-fong,  the 
last  hope  of  those  who  fear  the  progress  of  the  Southern  “Red”  armies, 
has  announced  that  the  salt  revenues  of  his  provinces  will  be  needed 
for  his  military  campaign.  Canton  has  gone  further  still,  issuing  a 
new  schedule  of  domestic  taxes  which  the  foreigners  say  is  a violation 
of  the  treaties;  and  the  Peking  Government  has  announced  that  it 
will  not  renew  its  treaty  with  Belgium,  which  the  foreigners  also  say 
it  has  no  right  to  do.  But  foreign  complaints  are  unavailing.  China’s 
very  chaos  is  an  asset  in  this  crisis.  An  old  Chinese  proverb  says 
that  you  cannot  hang  a jellyfish  upon  a nail.  The  foreign  Powers  had 
their  chance  to  modify  the  treaties  by  mutual  agreement;  but  instead 
they  hemmed  and  hawed,  and  agreed  to  move  a single  step  if  the 


42 


Chinese  would  move  miles,  and  out  of  all  the  conferences  came — 
except  for  the  rendition  of  the  Shanghai  Mixed  Court,  where  even 
the  treaties  gave  the  foreigners  no  excuse  for  their  action — just  exactly 
nothing. 

A diplomatic  training  is  a poor  background  for  dealing  with  a 
continental  revolution.  It  prepares  men  to  study  texts  and  precedents, 
to  live  by  the  letter  of  the  law — and  in  China  today  an  ancient  civiliza- 
tion is  slipping  over  a precipice,  and  the  rules  by  which  the  West 
had  learned  to  deal  with  it  are  sliding  too.  The  old  treaties  still 
exist  on  paper;  but  the  conditions  out  of  which  they  were  born  have 
gone  forever,  and  there  is  no  Western-minded  government  in  China 
to  devise  forms  to  bridge  the  gap.  The  diplomats  know  that  the  old 
status  is  gone — that  the  regime  under  which  foreigners  dictate  China’s 
customs  schedules,  collect  her  taxes,  police  her  rivers  with  their  foreign 
navies,  and  govern  her  greatest  commercial  cities  can  at  best  hardly 
survive  another  decade — but  they  do  not  know  enough  to  make  con- 
cessions gracefully.  Instead,  they  protest  every  violation  of  the  old 
code,  stand  on  rights  that  cannot  be  enforced,  and  end  by  making 
themselves  as  futilely  ridiculous  as  the  puppet  governments  which, 
unnoticed,  succeed  one  another  at  Peking. 

Wherever  a foreign  gunboat  sits  in  Chinese  waters  the  Chinese 
coolie  begins  to  see  another  irritating  symbol  of  the  treaties  which 
claim  for  the  white  men  superior  rights  and  privileges.  At  any 
moment  a spark  may  light  in  the  international  powder-magazine.  Yet 
the  newspapers  of  October  10  report  the  arrival  of  more  American 
warships  in  Chinese  waters,  bringing  our  toted  to  fifty-two! 

November  10.  China’s  civil  war  has  stopped  for  breath.  The 
Canton  armies  have  swarmed  over  nearly  half  of  China,  and  the  next 
step  may  well  be  negotiation  rather  than  new  battles.  The  gallant 
little  army  from  the  South  has  suffered  heavy  losses  and  needs  time 
to  organize  civil  administration  in  its  rear.  Its  first  attempt  to  take 
Shanghai — by  the  Russian  method  of  stirring  up  revolt  within  the 
enemy’s  ranks — has  failed;  but  no  one  who  knows  the  Chinese  Nation- 
alists believes  that  the  first  attempt  will  be  the  last.  Meanwhile,  of 
course,  Canton’s  enemies,  however  much  they  may  have  fought  each 
other  in  the  past,  are  patching  up  a skin-saving  peace  with  each  other. 
Sun  Chuan-fong,  master  of  Shanghai,  may  swear  blood  brotherhood 
with  Chang  Tso-lin,  the  war-lord  of  the  North,  but  he  is  unlikely  to 
renounce  his  ambition  to  rule  his  native  province  of  Shantung,  held 
now  by  one  of  Chang’s  henchmen.  These  ambitious  personalities 
cannot  in  the  long  run  prevail  against  the  cohesive  force  of  nationalist 
principles. 

November  2U.  Belgium  has  no  gunboats  in  Chinese  waters  and 
no  garrison  in  the  Legation  Quarter  of  Peking.  The  Great  Powers 


43 


are  right  in  thinking  that  China  has  begun  with  Belgium  in  order 
to  set  a precedent  where  precedents  will  be  most  easily  established; 
and  that  she  intends  to  proceed  from  the  particular  case  to  the  general 
application.  The  Chinese  Government  abrogated  the  old  treaty  with 
Belgium  and  announced  its  willingness  to  negotiate  a new  treaty  on 
a,  reciprocal  basis,  but  not  to  repeat  the  humiliating  lessons  of  the 
past.  And  while  the  Powers  have  been  mumbling  and  grumbling,  and 
Belgium  has  been  suggesting  reference  of  the  question  to  the  World 
Court  at  the  Hague,  the  plain  fact  remains  that  Belgian  citizens  in 
China  today  are  without  extraterritorial  privileges. 

The  Cantonese  army,  advancing  in  the  name  of  nationalism,  has 
been  sweeping  across  province  after  province.  Meanwhile,  in  this 
process  of  civil  war,  the  Chinese  factions  are  learning  how  to  fight. 
Canton’s  victories  were  not  won  by  vast  masses  of  coolies  fighting 
as  listlessly  as  chessmen.  Canton  fights  with  small  bodies  of  well- 
trained  and  well-armed  men — and  wins.  China  now  has  at  least  three 
first-class  arsenals,  and  others  of  smaller  caliber.  The  end  of  the 
“chaos”  which  appalled  Mr.  Strawn  may  be  a first-class  military  Power 
in  a nation  of  400,000,000  souls,  animated  and  united  by  a dislike  of 
Westerners.  Our  State  Department  and  the  other  foreign  offices 
would  do  well  to  rouse  themselves  and  look  for  opportunities  to  prove 
that  friendship  for  China  which  all  politicians  profess.  Japan  has 
reversed  her  role  in  recent  years ; she  is  the  one  foreign  Power  reported 
sympathetic  to  China’s  action  upon  the  Belgian  treaty.  She  knows 
China.  If  the  time  has  not  yet  come  it  may  soon  arrive  when  talk 
of  a pan-Asiatic  bloc  will  be  real. 

December  8.  Old  China,  struggling  to  give  birth  to  a modern 
nation,  is  in  a stage  of  spasmodic  convulsions.  She  has  been  begging 
the  Powers  to  leave  her  alone,  to  stop  dosing  her  with  their  medicine. 
And  at  a moment  when  she  seems  to  have  some  hope  of  pulling  her- 
self together,  when  the  Canton  group  is  at  last  uniting  the  country, 
the  Powers,  deaf  these  many  years,  suddenly  present  their  report, 
which  says  in  effect:  We  will  not  change  our  tactics  until  you  get 
well.  The  Extraterritoriality  Commission,  with  Silas  Strawn  as 
chairman,  having  spent  some  months  studying  China,  notes  her  chaotic 
condition  and  coolly  concludes,  if  the  preliminary  summaries  are  to 
be  trusted,  that  this  is  no  time  to  change  medicine.  In  the  future, 
maybe,  if  conditions  mend,  perhaps,  the  Powers  will  consider,  possibly, 
local  changes  in  their  claims  of  extraterritoriality. 

This  is  nonsense.  It  exhibits  an  appalling  lack  of  sense  of  pro- 
portion. Here  is  a solemn  report,  signed  by  the  representatives  of 
Italy,  Spain,  Portugal,  Japan,  Belgium,  Holland,  Norway,  Sweden, 
Denmark,  France,  the  British  Empire,  and  the  United  States — the 
“Treaty  Powers.”  Italy,  Spain,  and  Portugal  are  ruled  by  military 


44 


juntas,  Japan  by  a despotic  clique;  Britain  holds  India  by  force  alone; 
Belgium  and  Italy  have  compounded  their  debts,  but  France  is  simply 
stalling,  with  no  apparent  intention  of  paying  her  debt  to  the  United 
States;  and  the  United  States  seems  utterly  incapable  of  solving  its 
own  gunman  and  lynching  problems.  Yet  the  representatives  of  these 
nations  presume  to  sit  in  judgment  on  China,  to  complain  that  she 
is  governed  by  military  leaders,  that  her  treasury  is  depleted,  that 
“the  extension  and  protection  of  the  new  legal  and  judicial  systems 
are  being  retarded,”  and  smugly  demand  that  China  reform  herself. 
Before  the  Powers  withdraw  their  claims  to  separate  jurisdiction  in 
China,  they  assert,  China  must  reform  her  police,  her  prisons,  her 
commercial  code  (“including  negotiable-instruments  law,  maritime 
law,  and  insurance  law”),  establish  modern  detention-houses,  and  so 
on  through  a long  string  of  requirements  to  the  condescending 
conclusion  that 

After  the  principal  items  thereof  have  been  carried  out  the 
Powers  concerned,  if  so  desired  by  the  Chinese  Government,  might  con- 
sider the  abolition  of  extraterritoriality,  according  to  such  progressive 
schemes  (whether  geographical,  partial,  or  otherwise)  as  may  be 
agreed  upon. 

January  5,  1927.  Great  Britain  has  turned  a flying  somersault  in 
its  Chinese  policy  and  come  out  for  virtual  recognition  of  the  Canton 
Government  and  admission  of  China’s  right  to  levy  customs  taxes 
in  excess  of  the  treaty  rates.  Our  own  State  Department,  which  has 
sat  quietly  on  a shelf,  doing  nothing  but  admire  its  own  benevolent 
intentions,  must  be  wondering  what  kind  of  earthquake  has  hit 
Downing  Street.  The  Chinese  know  the  answer  very  well:  It  is  the 
economic  boycott.  For  sixteen  months  Canton  boycotted  British  goods 
in  South  China,  nearly  ruining  British  Hongkong;  now,  with  the 
Cantonese  occupying  the  Yangtze  Valley,  the  British  face  a possible 
extension  of  this  devastating  policy  of  economic  starvation.  In  the 
old  days — not  so  very  long  ago — the  white  men  in  the  East  had  a con- 
viction that  the  Oriental  understood  nothing  except  force.  The  Chi- 
nese, cannier,  have  a conviction  of  their  own:  that  the  Occidental 
understands  nothing  except  money ; the  place  to  hit  him  is  in  the  pocket- 
book.  This  is  the  second  great  revolution  in  foreign  policy  which 
China  has  achieved.  Japan,  since  the  Washington  Conference,  has 
adopted,  at  least  in  her  public  actions,  the  role  of  a friend  of  the 
new  China.  Now  Great  Britain  is  following  suit.  America’s  trade 
ranks  third  in  China,  behind  Japan’s  and  England’s;  apparently  our 
diplomacy  also  ranks  a poor  third. 

January  12.  For  two  centuries  Europe  has  dominated  the  earth. 
The  United  States,  in  the  beginning,  was  a m.ere  outpost  of  Europe. 


45 


But  times  have  changed.  The  power  and  position  of  America  in  the 
world  today  are  one  witness  of  the  fact;  statistics  compiled  for  the 
coming  Economic  Conference  at  Geneva  tell  another  part  of  the  story. 
Comparing  1925  with  1913  these  figures  show  that  whereas  Europe’s 
production  of  foodstuffs  and  raw  materials  has  increased  less  than 
5 per  cent,  her  foreign  trade  has  fallen  by  6 per  cent,  while  Asia’s 
production  has  gained  20  per  cent  and  her  trade  36  per  cent,  and 
North  America  has  gained  26  per  cent  in  production  and  37  per  cent 
in  foreign  trade.  One  may  say  that  this  is  the  fault  of  the  war,  and 
think  that  the  world  will  placidly  resume  its  pre-war  ways.  Yet  per- 
haps the  war  was  but  a chapter  in  a story  which,  half-noticed,  was 
writing  itself  before  that  cataclysm  brought  sudden  ruin  to  the  old 
continent. 

History,  looked  at  in  the  large,  records  no  lasting  predominance 
of  the  European  peoples.  Four  or  five  centuries  ago  they  started 
voyaging  with  a zest  and  persistence  such  as  voyagers  had  never  had 
before;  and  accordingly  they  discovered  lost  or  unknown  continents 
and  began  the  development  of  the  prodigious  internatiopal  trade  of 
today.  Within  the  last  two  centuries  they  have  spread  their  political 
control  over  the  rest  of  the  earth’s  peoples.  But  what  are  two  cen- 
turies, or  even  four  or  five,  in  the  history  of  the  earth — ^what  can  they 
tell  of  the  capacities  of  a race?  China’s  civilization  is  four  or  five 
millenniums  old;  and  throughout  that  immense  period,  century  by 
century,  she  had  a richer  civilization  to  boast  of  than  Western  Europe 
— until  the  puny  fragment  of  time  which  has  elapsed  since  the  Indus- 
trial Revolution  gave  the  West  its  present  driving  power.  Today  the 
West,  having  conquered  the  East,  has  also  given  it  the  weapons  with 
which  to  reassert  its  ancient  preeminence.  Russians,  schooled  in  Ger- 
many and  America,  travel  as  advisers  with  Chiang  Kai-shek’s  Can- 
tonese armies;  a British  general  buys  in  Japan  supplies  for  Chang 
Tso-lin’s  Mukden  arsenal;  Americans  direct  the  technical  work  of  the 
Kiangnan  arsenal;  General  Wood  is  giving  the  youth  of  the  Philip- 
pines military  training;  and  Mussolini’s  gun-laden  merchant  ships  are 
ready  to  sell  to  any  buyer.  Where  we  have  superiority — in  military 
science,  in  technical  processes — we  are  selling  out  to  the  East  as  fast 
as  the  East  can  afford  to  purchase. 

A new  tide  is  running.  We  have  never  properly  appreciated  the 
historic  significance  of  Turkey’s  successful  denunciation  of  the 
shackling  capitulations.  China  is  following  in  Turkey’s  steps.  Great 
Britain,  beaten  by  Canton’s  year-long  boycott  of  her  goods,  has  made  a 
sudden  reversal  of  policy,  and  offered  to  agree  to  steps  which  a year 
ago  she  contemptuously  refused — and,  more  significant  still,  the  Chi- 
nese today  refuse  her  offers  of  compromise  as  too  slight.  A quarter 
century  ago  the  Powers,  by  a short  military  expedition,  brought  the  old 
Chinese  Empire  to  its  knees.  Today  they  are  rightly  afraid  to  try  force 


46 


on  chaotic  young  China — the  sturdy  child  has  in  the  interim  learned 
too  much  about  force. 

January  19.  From  the  “British  Concession”  at  Hankow  the 
frightened  British  withdrew,  faced  by  an  overwhelming  Chinese  mob, 
on  January  5,  1927. 

Two  facts  stand  out:  First,  the  American  consulate  and  the  Amer- 
ican business  firms,  fiying  American  fiags  in  Chinese  territory  close 
to  the  British  Concession,  and  the  missionaries  across  the  river  in 
Chinese  Wuchang  went  unharmed  while  mobs  raged  through  the  Brit- 
ish territory,  tearing  down  the  Union  Jack  and  defacing  the  British 
war  memorial.  The  American  policy  of  refusing  territorial  concessions 
proved  itself  wise  in  a stormy  time.  Second,  it  was  the  coolie-mass 
which  swept  the  British  out  of  Hankow,  not  Russian-trained  soldiers 
from  Canton.  The  spirit  behind  that  mob  is  no  product  of  one  gov- 
ernment’s ukases;  it  is  a reaction  to  a century  of  foreign  domineering; 
it  cannot  be  stopped;  it  may  be  silenced  for  a moment  at  one  spot  or 
another,  but  it  will  sweep  on  across  China. 

Thus  far  in  this  crisis  the  British,  bearing  the  brunt  of  the  Chi- 
nese attack,  have  acted  with  discretion.  On  January  3 British  marines 
and  armed  volunteers  guarding  the  Hankow  Concession  stood  off  a 
surging  Chinese  mob  with  the  butts  of  their  guns,  obeying  a London 
order  not  to  fire.  Furthermore,  the  Cantonese  had  warned  them  that 
if  they  did  fire  not  a foreigner  would  be  left  alive  in  Hankow.  The 
press  dispatches,  almost  all  of  British  origin  (the  Associated  Press 
unfortunately  depends  upon  Reuter,  a British  news  agency,  for  its 
Chinese  news,  and  the  United  Press  service  is  inadequate),  report 
that  the  British  soldiers  were  singularly  restrained;  the  dispatches, 
however,  mention  a Chinese  demand  for  apology  for  the  brutality  of 
the  marines,  while  omitting  to  tell  in  what  the  brutality  consisted. 
On  January  4 the  foreign  soldiers  were  withdrawn,  protection  being 
left  to  the  British-trained  Chinese  police  and  to  an  outside  cordon  of 
Cantonese  troops.  The  mobs  broke  through  these  lines  and  hoisted 
the  red  fiag  of  South  China  in  place  of  the  Union  Jack  over  the  British 
official  buildings.  The  Union  Jack  Club  temporarily  became  head- 
quarters of  a labor  union.  British  women  were  evacuated;  British 
men  were  concentrated  in  the  buildings  of  the  Asiatic  Petroleum  Com- 
pany. (Meanwhile,  American  business  houses  a few  blocks  away  in 
the  old  Russian  Concession  which  is  now  Chinese  territory  remained 
open  for  business.)  On  January  6,  fortunately,  it  rained;  the  spirit 
of  the  mob  was  dampened ; and  order  was  restored.  Regular  Cantonese 
troops  took  over  control  of  the  British  Concession.  At  Kiukiang,  130 
miles  downstream,  the  British  Concession  has  also  fallen  into  Chinese 
hands. 


47 


February  2.  The  cables  are  full  of  pacific  speeches,  but  from  the 
lesser  dispatches  we  assemble  the  following  amazing  data:  On  Janu- 
ary 12  there  were  in  the  Yangtze  River  in  China  9 British  gunboats, 
1 sloop,  6 destroyers,  and  5 cruisers.  Three  more  cruisers,  an  aircraft 
carrier  with  airplanes,  and  other  British  warcraft  were  in  other  Chi- 
nese waters.  In  all,  there  were  62  foreign  warships — British,  Amer- 
ican, French,  and  Japanese — in  the  Chinese  Yangtze  River!  On  Janu- 
ary 19  the  British  cruisers  Frobisher,  Delhi,  Dragon,  and  Danae  left 
Malta  for  China;  on  January  24,  1,000  royal  marines  sailed  from 
Portsmouth  for  China  on  board  the  Zeeland,  and  the  White  Star  liner 
Megantic  was  in  drydock  after  being  fitted  as  a troopship  for  China; 
four  more  battalions  of  infantry,  comprising  140  officers  and  3,424 
men,  and  the  Fifth  Armored  Car  Company  were  under  orders  to  sail 
from  England;  two  battalions  in  Malta  were  also  under  orders;  two 
liners  had  been  chartered  to  sail  from  India  for  China;  the  Durham 
Light  Infantry,  the  Gloucestershires,  and  a battalion  of  Punjab  infan- 
try were  reported  mobilizing;  and  three  companies  of  “Punjab  Indian- 
British  soldiers  were  dispatched  from  Hongkong  to  Shanghai”;  on 
January  24  it  was  announced  that  an  expeditionary  force  of  12,000 
men,  with  armored  cars,  would  leave  England  at  once.  Actions  speak 
louder  than  words.  The  United  States  has  55  warships,  8,000  blue- 
jackets, and  800  infantrymen  in  or  close  to  China.  Is  there  something 
sinister  and  secret  behind  the  fine  words  of  the  statesmen? 

Fehmary  9.  When  bands  are  playing  “Tipperary”  for  soldiers 
marching  through  London  streets  to  China-bound  transports;  when 
soldiers  are  mobilizing  for  China  service  in  England,  Malta,  India, 
and  Hongkong;  when  one  of  the  greatest  international  navies  ever 
assembled  in  the  history  of  the  world  is  gathering  at  Shanghai;  when 
barbed-wire  fortifications  are  thrown  up  about  the  foreign  city  there 
and  daily  parades  are  being  held  of  foreign  volunteers  and  of  Eng- 
land’s bearded  mercenaries  from  the  Punjab,  China  is  justified  in 
wondering  what  is  the  significance  of  the  fine  speeches  which  the  white 
statesmen  are  making. 

Austen  Chamberlain  says: 

As  regards  the  concession  areas  we  are  prepared  to  enter  into 
local  arrangements  according  to  particular  circumstances  at  each 
port,  either  for  the  amalgamation  of  the  administration  with  those  of 
the  adjacent  areas  under  Chinese  control  or  for  some  other  method 
of  handing  over  the  administration  to  the  Chinese  while  assuring  to 
the  British  community  some  voice  in  municipal  matters. 

That  sounds  well,  but  is  it  well?  He  is  “prepared  to  enter  into 
local  arrangements.”  When?  At  once,  while  the  iron  is  hot?  Or 
will  he  wait  until  the  20,000  men  and  the  rest  of  the  cruisers  arrive 
in  China;  and  what  will  he  mean  then  by  “some  voice  in  municipal 


48 


matters”?  The  Chinese  know  that  the  only  British  concessions  which 
have  ever  come  back  to  them  are  in  Hankow  and  Kiukiang,  and  that 
those  were  won  by  Chinese  mobs  which  overran  them.  The  way  to 
teach  the  Chinese  a better  way  is  to  prove  that  something  can  be 
attained  by  peaceful  methods. 

Thus  far,  in  all  the  recent  chaos  and  civil  war,  with  riots  in  a 
score  of  cities,  missions  requisitioned,  concessions  overrun,  not  a single 
foreigner  has  lost  his  life.  The  warnings  to  women  and  children  to 
leave  China  apparently  have  been  issued  by  flighty  consuls  in  the 
safest  treaty  ports.  Perhaps  it  is  just  as  well;  if  the  consuls  had 
foreknowledge  of  the  plans  for  the  vast  international  armada  they 
did  well  to  order  their  nationals  out  of  China.  The  first  repercussion 
of  the  seizure  of  Hankow  by  the  Southerners  was  a demand  by  the 
Northerners  for  return  of  the  Tientsin  concessions  in  their  territory; 
the  first  effect  of  the  announcement  of  the  British  expeditionary  force 
was  a declaration  by  Chang  Hsueh-liang,  son  of  Chang  Tso-lin,  gen- 
eralissimo of  the  North,  that  if  the  British  landed  troops  in  China 
the  North  would  join  the  South  to  drive  them  out — and  the  next  step 
was  to  appeal  to  the  League  of  Nations  against  the  British  invaders. 

But  the  cities  under  foreign  administration  which  have  grown  up 
at  Shanghai  are  largely  populated  by  Chinese.  The  so-called  French 
and  International  Settlements  between  them  have  a population  of 
nearly  two  millions,  of  which  only  50,000  are  whites.  Eighty  per  cent 
of  the  land,  even,  is  owned  by  Chinese.  It  is  possible  to  land  as  many 
troops  as  there  are  foreigners  in  Shanghai,  and  to  hold  the  city;  but 
is  it  worth  it?  What  is  the  use  of  the  foreigners  existing  there  if 
they  cannot  do  business  with  the  hinterland,  if  their  troops  arouse 
against  them  a resentment  which  makes  trade  impossible? 

February  16.  White  men’s  arrogance  was  never  better  displayed 
than  in  Secretary  Kellogg’s  demand  that  the  foreign  settlement  of 
Shanghai  be  made  a neutral  zone.  There  are,  he  said,  30,000  foreign- 
ers, including  4,000  Americans,  in  Shanghai,  and  they  should  be  spared 
the  rigors  of  civil  war.  It  happens  that  Shanghai  is  a part  of  China, 
and  there  are  some  two  million  Chinese  in  Shanghai  who,  whatever 
happens,  will  undoubtedly  suffer  more  than  any  of  the  foreigners. 
The  white  men  in  the  East  persist  in  thinking  that  they  are  entitled 
to  exemption  from  the  perils  and  difficulties  which  yellow  men  have 
to  suffer. 

Someone  in  Shanghai  has  reminded  the  British  that  Shanghai  is 
not  a British  city.  There  is  in  it,  to  be  sure,  an  “international  settle- 
ment” administered  by  a council  of  foreign  taxpayers,  but  even  that 
is  technically  Chinese  soil.  The  British,  however,  serenely  content 
with  the  old  doctrine  that  possession  is  nine-tenths  of  the  law,  started 
to  build  barracks  in  Jessfield  Park,  outside  the  boundaries  of  the  Inter- 


49 


national  Settlement,  planning  to  house  in  them  a part  of  their  Chi- 
nese expeditionary  force.  The  Chinese  authorities  protested — even  the 
friendly  local  militarist  protested;  and  the  British  had  to  change  their 
plans.  Then  “someone”  on  the  Municipal  Council  protested  against 
quartering  the  troops  anjrwhere  within  the  “international”  city.  The 
cable  dispatches  did  not  tell  us  who  protested;  but  one  may  suspect 
that  the  Japanese  are  recalling  that  they  are  Asiatics,  that  the  British- 
Japanese  alliance  was  broken  by  the  British  to  please  America,  and 
that  British  colonies  and  the  United  States  exclude  them  as 
undesirables. 

“Wanted:  Marines,  for  service  in  China,”  the  recruiting  boards 
read  all  over  the  United  States.  The  marines  have  been  withdrawn 
from  the  mail-trucks,  mobilized  at  the  ports,  and,  like  the  British  regi- 
ments, are  being  transshipped  for  the  Orient.  We  have  no  conces- 
sions in  China,  it  is  true;  our  officials  make  as  pretty  speeches  as  the 
British;  but  we  have  sixty  warships  in  Eastern  waters,  and  will  soon 
have  15,000  troops  available.  Does  anyone  in  Washington  expect  the 
Chinese  to  take  our  words  seriously  when  our  actions  speak  the 
language  of  war? 

February  23.  It  is  the  foreign-trained  men  who  clamor  most 
against  the  foreigner.  Eugene  Chen,  the  Canton  Foreign  Minister 
who  has  been  most  bitter  against  the  aliens,  is  himself  of  alien  birth 
and  training.  He  is  a native  of  Trinidad  and  was  educated  in  England; 
it  was  the  British  who  taught  him  his  present  race  consciousness.  His 
predecessors  in  that  office  were  also  foreign  trained — Fu  Ping-sheung, 
graduate  of  the  British  University  of  Hongkong,  and  C.  C.  Wu,  who 
went  from  the  public  high  school  at  Atlantic  City,  New  Jersey,  to  the 
Univei’sity  of  London.  The  Peking  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  who 
forced  Belgium  to  negotiate  new  equal  treaties,  Wellington  Koo,  is  a 
graduate  of  our  own  Columbia  University;  his  predecessors  hold  their 
academic  degrees  from  Virginia  and  Yale.  Chu  Chao-hsin,  who  uses 
the  League  of  Nations  as  a sounding-board  to  broadcast  his  attacks 
on  British  policy,  has  degrees  from  New  York  and  Columbia,  and 
most  of  his  colleagues  are  foreign  trained. 

This  is  no  accident.  The  nationalist  movement  is  strongest  where 
foreign  influence  has  been  most  intense.  Canton  is  its  natural  center 
because  it  has  been  the  center  of  intercourse  with  foreigners  for  more 
than  a century.  Western  influence  in  China  has  acted  like  a vacci- 
nation; it  has  first  made  the  patient  ill,  while  at  the  same  time  inocu- 
lating him  with  the  germs  of  resistance  to  the  disease.  The  more 
troops  the  British  ship  to  China,  the  more  bitter  will  be  the  resistance 
to  the  foreigners. 

Much  hinges  on  the  British  course  at  Shanghai.  It  is  often  said 
that  the  British  in  China  always  act  with  an  eye  upon  India;  it  is 


50 


true.  To  the  British  the  concessions  already  made  seem  great.  A 
year  ago  they  might  have  seemed  great  even  to  the  Chinese.  But 
there  is  such  a thing  as  the  psychological  moment.  The  British  let 
that  moment  slide;  today  the  Chinese  regard  their  successive  retreats 
as  evidences  of  weakness,  and  they  are  such.  The  American  “return” 
of  the  Boxer  indemnity  in  1908  was  a step  in  time;  it  gave  America 
a perhaps  unmerited  prestige;  similar  British  action  in  1925  came 
too  late  to  have  any  psychological  effect.  Compromises  and  conces- 
sions made  after  mobs  and  militarists  have  already  seized  the  points 
conceded  cannot  appease  the  nationalist  fire.  Bonny  troops — Scotch, 
British,  Irish,  and  Indian — parading  through  the  streets  of  Chinese 
cities  may  awe  for  the  moment,  but  they  will  only  deepen  the  deter- 
mined hostility  in  every  Chinese  who  sees  or  hears  of  them.  The 
effect  will  indeed  be  felt,  not  in  China  and  India  alone  but  in  all  the 
Eastern  colonies  of  all  the  white  empires. 

March  9.  At  Shanghai  the  British  are  defending  a line  which 
reaches  far  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  International  Settlement 
into  purely  Chinese  territory.  They  have  not  bothered  to  give  any 
excuse,  not  even  to  explain  that  their  promises  to  observe  China’s 
national  integrity  are  mere  “scraps  of  paper”;  like  the  Germans  in 
Belgium  thirteen  years  ago,  they  have  simply  taken  the  most  con- 
venient course.  Meanwhile  Sun  Chuan-fong,  recently  lord  of  five 
provinces,  is  fading  out  of  the  picture.  His  defeat  by  the  Cantonese 
near  Hangchow  was  a tremendous  blow  to  his  prestige;  and  the  reck- 
less butchery  of  Cantonese  sympathizers  by  his  underling  in  Shanghai 
lost  him  the  last  vestige  of  sympathy  among  his  own  people.  (It  is 
instructive  to  reflect  what  might  have  been  the  comments  of  the 
British  press  had  a Cantonese  general  rather  than  a friend  of  Eng- 
land’s beheaded  a hundred  of  his  opponents.)  Chang  Tsung-chang, 
the  bandit  chief  of  Shantung,  is  moving  his  troops  into  the  Shanghai 
region,  but  the  force  of  public  opinion,  which  mysteriously  wins 
battles  in  China,  is  against  him,  and  he  will  suffer  the  same  eclipse 
as  Sun  Chuan-fong. 

March  16.  Doubtless  the  American  marines  who  had  been  cooped 
up  on  shipboard  in  the  river  off  Shanghai  were  enormously  relieved 
when  the  order  came  to  disembark  and  march,  drums  beating  and 
flags  flying,  through  Nanking  Road  and  out  to  Jessfield  Park.  And 
doubtless  the  Americans  who  live  in  Shanghai  under  the  protection 
of  the  British  flag  were  glad  to  see  this  visible  evidence  that  the 
United  States  stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  Britain  in  defense  of 
the  foreign  lives  and  property  centering  in  Shanghai.  Unfortunately, 
it  meant  more  than  that.  To  the  watching  Chinese  it  meant  that 
America  indorsed  Britain’s  action  in  invading  Chinese  territory 
because  it  happened  to  be  more  convenient  to  do  so. 


51 


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